The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-08-26
Is NORTH CAROLINA TO INITIATE
ROOSEVELT IN SOCIAL
EQUALITY?

ALL 4 l.
The news that Senator Bacon and a
party of Georgians preferred to go hun
cry rather than eat in the office at Ham
let, while the regular dining room was
given up to the negroes, will be applauded
throughout the length and breadth of the
South. If every boarder at the Hamlet
hotel had refused to be served in that
dining room, after Booker Washington
and his crowd departed, it would have
served the hotel proprietors right.
We heard much some time ago about
the threatened danger that ''the bottom
rail would get On top Then no hotel
proprietor in the South would have dared
to ask or permit two score Of negroes
to eat in his dining room. In Hamlet
the whites whose hunger compelled them
to eat, had to be content with being
served at a side table in the hotel office
while the negroes sat in the main dining
room. If that isn't letting the bottom
rail get on top, pray what is it? But the
regular boarders and all day transients at
the hotel Jared even worse. They had
to wait till the negroes got through and
then were served ON the same table in the
main dining room where Booker Washing
ton and his associates had shortly prior
thereto eaten at the first table. 1t is
something new to make the white folks
wait for the second table in North Caro-
lima. Senator Bacon preferred to go hun
cry rather than eat at a side table or
at the second table. And he did right
1t would have been a wholesome lesson
if every other white man had made the
same protest against this dangerous inno-
walton.
When it was first reported that the
regular white dining room at Hamlet, had
been opened for Booker Washington and
thirty-seyen other negroes, few people
gave it credence. The general statement
was: There must be some mistake"
But it turns out to be even worse than
reported, for, not only were the negroes
served in the regular dining room,
but the white passengers were
showed off into the hotel office, while
others were asked to eat at the second
table-using the same chairs, and the
same tables in the same dining room
which short while previous had been
used by Booker Washington. And this
happened in Richmond county, the birth
place of the red-shirt where the banner
of White Supremacy first waved in 1898!
Can such things be and overcome us
like summers cloud
And not excite our special wonder?"
A few months ago when the President
invited Booker Washington to dine at the
White House the whole country stood
aghast that the traditions of more than
an hundred years had been departed from.
What has been the result? The silly
negroes have taken this display of social
equality in the White House as an invi-
tation to social equality everywhere. Ami
mated by that bad example, they have
behaved worse in the past twelve months
than heretofore and in consequence more
of them have dangled at the end of ropes.
Who would have thought that in this
of Co.. +I,a
history of the State. the whites should
be made to stand aside that negroes could
be given seats at the first table? 1t
Booker Washington and his crowd ought
to be invited into the general dining room,
where is the line to be drawn? There are
plenty of negroes in North Carolina as
good and as we'll dressed as Booker
Washington. Are they to be discrimina-
ted against in favor of Alabama or Ten
nessee negroes? If the color line is to be
broken down in our hotels, the North
Carolina negroes ought to be given seats
at the first table.
This matter. no doubt. seemed little
one to the hotel proprietors. They acted
IN haste. They will repent at leisure. 1t
is not little matter in any way to
break down the barrier between the
races. 1t is the duty of every good citizen
to protest and fight against breaking it
down In any respect. Instead of letting
the barrier down every effort should be
made to raise it higher. 1t is the only safety
of the South, and the man who does any
thing to make the color line less clear
and distinct is, consciously or uncon-