t it is full
of mutilations and amputations which disfigure it almost beyond
recognition. One-half of it appears in the light clothed with fragments of
his rights, and the other half is in eclipse, exposed naked to biting cold
and bitter wrong. He appeals to good men and true in the South and in the
North and in the Government too, to give him what he is entitled to. He
does not get it or anything like it. There does not appear to be common
honesty and decency enough in the railroads to give him what he pays for
as an interstate traveller, human compassion to say nothing of common
justice enough in the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce against
the railroads the law made by the Government to conciliate the race
prejudice of the South. The separate car feature of the Railroad Rate Bill
was inserted in deference to the demand of the South, and the equal
accommodation feature as an act of plain commercial justice to the Negro.
The South has never failed to get its separate cars, while the Negro has
never failed either to receive the most unequal accommodations in open
violation of the provisions of that bill.

But this is not all or anything like all that mars almost beyond
recognition the citizenship of the Negro. If one doubts this, let him go
into the South and let him venture to incite the Negroes there to an
assertion of their rights. Freedom of the press is theirs under the
Constitution. Does anyone suppose that they would be allowed to say
publicly what they think about the un-Christian and undemocratic way in
which they are treated? Let them try it and see what will happen to them,
that is, if they be wholly reckless of consequences. Freedom of the press
is another of their rights, one of the boasted bulwarks of the
Constitution. Does anyone suppose that they would be allowed to write as
freely or anything like as freely about white men and women, especially
the latter, as white men write about colored men and women? Let some
colored editor make the experiment and tell afterward what happened to him
hot on the heels of his article. He may not be able to enlighten the
public but the associated press dispatch will give the grim facts relating
to the end of that editor, who undertook to monkey with the buzz saw of
the freedom of the press in a Southern community.

Another of the sacred rights which appertain to the Negro's American
citizenship is the right of public assembly to consider his grievances and
disc