The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-02
MrsrnEArMENr or, NEGROES.

done Q protect the colored people m the North from iil-treatment and mob violence They are safe nowhere. 1t seems. North of Mason and Dixon's line, and arc apparently regarded as outlaws who have no civil rights and are entitled to no protection our news columns on Thursday and Fri
 day contained some details of the etroubles at Springfield. Ohio, where the negroes are being treated with savage brutality which is disgrace to civilization. Driven from their homes like wild beasts, their houses burned. women and children turned into the streets to freeze or starve. the men assaulted, shot and beaten, form some of the incidents of the outbreak.
 But this Springfield affair is not an exceptional one. If that were the case we might think that some special or local cause was behind it, but 1t can not be explained that way. It is not merely in one Ohio city that this gross mistreatment of negroes pre- vaifs. In Indiana. Kansas, Illinois: in New York. Philadelphia, New Jersey in fact the same conditions prevail in almost every section of the North and West Hardly anywhere tip there is the negro treated like a civilized be- ing and an American citizen.
 In the heated days of abolitionism it was charged that Chief Justice Fancy had declared that the blacks s.a .x .s.~a.s x.,htnh tt, .x,t,f4a ,aat1 was bound to respect" That was never really true of the South. but it Is fast coming true in the North. It is true that they are allowed to vote as their white bosses direct--and some times are allowed to sit at the white mans table, and possibly to sleep In the white mans bed, but those are about all the rights the cclored man l wets from his ululant friends up North. The right to be an industrious citi- gen. to live at peace among the white people, to work for living in compe- tition with white labor--these are not looked on as being among the vested and assured rights of a colored in- dividuai after he leaves his Southern home.
 What is to be done to assure to the negro in the North the rights of citi- zenship? It seems that local or State authority is poweriess. With a reg sment of State troops on guard at Springfield, the criminal acts of the mob went right on without cheek. | If the Northern States can not or will not protect the coiored man will the Federal government be compelled to interfere? For a generation we have been reading diatribes from the writ CTS and speakers of the North with l reference to the alleged cruel treat ment of the colored men in the South. l We have been told time and again that
 it is the duty of the government to see that the negroes down here get
 their rights. The President himself
 has much 60 say apout "a square deal" and when a delegation of negroes vis-
 It's him he assures them that they
 shall have all that is coming to them, just as If they were whites.
 What sin have we to repent of. so
 far as treatment of the negroes Is
 concerned? True. he does not enjoy
 universal suffrage, and ought not. It
 Is also true that we real southerners
 do not invite eoiored people to sit UT
 at our tables, to sleep in our beds. to
 occupy the same seats in schools and
 churches, or to sit by us in the cars
 as a general thing. In short, there
 is no mixing and mingling of races
 in any social respect, because we dc : not think it best for either race. and
 we prefer to order our lives in oul
 own way. knowing what is best to bt
 done.
 But this exclusiveness and ostra. cism does not bar the negro from al
 chances to live and labor for himself Take Montgomery. a typical Southern
 city. as a sample. There is hardly ar industry in this city where negroes
 are not engaged. A search among tn, [ many buildings that are going up il all portions of the city and suburbs will hardly find a single one wher, ! negroes are not employed. It is tn,
 same in the mills and the shops anC everywhere else that manual labo is going on. The white man and tn,
 black man work side by side in peac, and harmony, and when the days worl is over each goes his own way. Tn negroes have their homes in ever.
 quarter of the city. often close neigh
 bors to the whites, and as long a . they conduct themselves even fairl we'll they are not molested. They ar not driven out, stoned. and thei 5 houses burned as is so often done fur j. ther North. The negro here is saf T from molestation or from any forr Il of imposition or maltreatment jus as long as he is fairly quiet and or derly as a citizen.
 i We are not writing in any feelin
 of bitterness or ill-feeling toward our fellow citizens up North. W 2 merely speak words of truth and SC berness" when we refer to their wan
 Of fairness and justice. Knowing tn
 negro as we do, we know what he de r serves and should receive. He doe g not get it from the Northern peopl, ~-----s~e-s
 h l rauy .