The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1902-07-04
FRIDAT, JULY 4, 1902.
\ PECTs OF THE RACE PROBLEM.

A friend hands US the editorial pub
lished below from The Oregonian, Of
Portland, Oregon, On the incident Of
MISS Mary Custis Lee being arrested
a short while g for violating the Jim
Crow car law of Virginia. Our read
ers will remember that Miss Lee took a
seat in the car reserved, as the law of
Virginia requires, for negroes. When
told by the conductor of the train of
her mistake she refused to go into the
car reserved for white people and, on
reaching Alexandria, was arrested and
AXE before a magistrate, who sus-
tanned h railway conductor in his ac-
ton and DOL Miss Lees personal re-
cognizance for her appearance in his
court h next day. The last report of
the affair was that Miss Lee had for
feited her bond of five dollars by fail
ure to appear- We p the case
was dropped there.
The writer of the editorial given be-
low is the same person who wrote an
editorial in The Oregonian on the race
riot in Wilmington of such a character
as 10 a forth the remark from a Will
mingtonian hat it's author was either
a northern genius or a sOutherner, for
no other could so we'll understand the
situation. A letter of inquiry sent
away out to the northwest pacific coast
brought the information that he was a
southerner.
Here is the editorial on the case OF
Miss Lee:
The arrest of Miss Mary Custis Lee
at Alexandria, Va, yesterday for vio-
luton of a local ordinance. which for
bids a white man or woman to ride
in that part of a street car reserved
for negroes, is interesting on several
accounts. Personally, it appears, Miss
Lee felt no repugnance to such contact
with the blacks as was involved in sit
ting among them; at least, she did not
care enough about it to change her
seat No doubt, in her infancy, she
was nursed by a black "mammy;'' no
doubt the closest personal intimacies
of her life have been with black SER
wants.
Miss Lees attitude is significant be-
cause 1t is characteristic of the south.
Strong as the ace feeling is there, it
does not rest upon physical antipathy,
liz SOulneII people nave no SUCH
aversion to personal contact
with the negro as northerners very
commonly have. This is demonstrated
in a thousand ways-by the universal
employment of black nurses, by the I'M
restrained mutual play of white and
black children, by the presence in near
ly every white household of negro SER
wants, and by-no means least signii-
existence everywhere in the
sS0nth of h0rp6 mUlaft0QS
The protest of the southern people
against anything suggestive of social
contact with the negro does not rest
upon They are willing to
sit next to a negro If there be in the
some distinct mark of his So
cia1 inferiority INC subordination. No
southerner objects to riding in the
same seat with his black driver. but
wild horses could not drive him to a
seat beside the same man at dinner.
The physical difference is not much;
the moral and social distinction is
overwhelming and absolute. There are
in the north those who affect not to
understand it; but they are persons
either wanting in candor or without
the sensibilities which enable men to
judge i~ntelligently M fairly of the
conduct and motives of other men,.
There is, of course, a profound mo-
tive back of his universal southern
determination to hold the negro to his
place" To some extent it rests upon
the old slavery tradition: but this is
only part of it. In many parts of the
south the negroes outnumber the
whites. and if they were allowed to
vote, they would everywhere in alli-
ance with white scallawag associates,
rule in the local politics. Permit them
full enjoyment of the political privi-
lege. and add to it general quality of
social privilege, and they would, it is
universally believed, overwhelm the
country and practically max it unin-
habitable for white men. Social and
political subordination of the blacks is,
in the universal southern view, essen
tfal to the domination of intelligence
and property-in other words. to white
supremacy.
This explains the bitterness Of the
south in connection with the Booker
Washington incident, and in respect to