ed that the admission of Negro students to the
University of South Carolina had not effected its destruction. He did
not believe that the passage of the bill would alienate from the
Negroes the white men of the South who were then friendly to them.
Cain reviewed, furthermore, the history of the part played by the
Negro in the economic and industrial development of the nation,
pointed out the importance of giving to him, in every State, the best
possible school facilities, asserted the right of the Negro by
statutory enactment to his full civil liberties, and insisted that in
the name of justice he should demand for himself all the rights,
privileges and immunities accorded to other citizens.[58] Conforming
in principle to the doctrine that he had pronounced, Cain introduced
before Congress a bill supplementary to the Civil Rights Act.[59]

Much of the energy of James E. O'Hara, a representative from North
Carolina, in the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses, was directed
toward the protection of the Negro in the exercise of his civil
rights.[60] During the course of his remarks on the bill to regulate
interstate commerce, he offered an amendment to the effect that any
person or persons having purchased a ticket to be conveyed from one
State to another, or paid the required fare, should receive the same
treatment and be offered equal facilities and accommodation as are
furnished all other persons holding tickets of the same class, without
discrimination. In support of this amendment, he asserted the
constitutional right of Congress to regulate commerce between the
States, and that the action contemplated by his amendment came within
the scope of this constitutional power. Denying that it was class or
race legislation, he maintained that it was in line with the
enlightened point of view of the age. The amendment was passed.[61]
His opponents, however, were not sufficiently progressive to leave his
victory intact.

A defense of the civil rights of the Negro was brought prominently to
the fore in the Fifty-first Congress. In his remarks on the affairs of
South Carolina,[62] Thomas E. Miller, a representative from that
State, declared that the Negroes of South Carolina were suffering from
several distinct causes. Among these causes he named lynch law, the
petty system of theft which deprived them of the fruits of their daily
toil, and injustice in the courts in which they had no rights where
their interests and those o