Evening star., 1915-02-20
Similar to Viewpoint on Slavery
o the Editor of The Star

10 the fQltor OF IDe STAR:
/ hope you will permit one who has
seen and borne the discomforts ano
humiliation of race segregation on pub
lie railway cars to present side OF
the case against the enactment OF
the so-called Jim Grow" car law.
Robert Harlow in Saturdays Star
presented the argument from his view
point, SO similar to the viewpoint OF
many men of more than fifty years
ago who argued in favor of slavery
One form of segregation leads to others
less endurable and less lawful than
preceding ones. For number of years
l have lived in a neighboring suburb
where phases of lin Crowism" have
proven false the claims made for it by
your correspondent of saturday. Equal
modations" have deteriorated in
nearly all instances to less than sec
ondary values, although equal fares
are paid. On one line we have sepa-
rate waiting rooms-one for the white
passengers kept in as good shape as
the management of the road has pro-
vided for, and another for colored pas
sengers, oftentimes the repository for
baggage, Grated chickens, sheep, calves
pigs. general freight, fuel, refuse; a
dining room for trackmen; dirty and
without fire in the cold weather
Within the cars colored passengers
sit at the rear end, exposed to the cold
air that penetrates on the incoming
and outgoing of each passenger, while
equal accommodations provide an even
temperature toward the front. Bundles
of marketing and packages of all de-
scriptfonS are cast down in the color
ed section, while their owners either
stand and crowd the aisle or go fur
ther front, having divested themselves
of express saving baggage. Drunken
men of the favored race drop down to-
ward the rear and seldom are carried
front. Laborers whose attire is in
keeping with their employment often
impose themselves upon the company
of their fellow colored passengers.
Ride to Richmond in the Jim Crow car
at night, an obsolete wooden car
wedged in between the tender of the
engine and a long line of modern in
destructible steel coaches, and try to
read by the dim, lusterless yellow light
in this car, and then look back and see
strung along the line the brightly
burning modern light, and you have an
other fairer conception of segregation
and equal accommodations.
Mr.. Harlow, judge, is man. of some
wealth. for he takes the stand that it
is wrong for his wife, his daughter
and his sister to be seated in public
and they should also be separated, he
says, from the dirt and disease that
accompany forms of poverty as
it is separated from the pure. sweet
and clean" He says the treatment of
colored people in America is an affair
of Americans and other nations treat it
as such. Why do we attempt to Chris
Turkey, japan, Africa. when
some in this country are endeavoring
to settle difficulties so much unlike the
way of the lowly NaZarene? Mr.. Har-
low says the sooner separate cars come
the better and the sooner will colored
people settle down and accept the con-
dition. Does he suppose all Belgiaus
in Brussels have accepted the condi-
tions. or did all Alsatians settle down
in Alsace? Though we may submit to
powers of might incorporated into laws.
colored people are beginning to protest
against measures that
strike at the hearts of ten millions of
as devoted a citizenship as country
has been able to boast of.
The best part of such agitation as
Mr.. Harlow and others of his type pro-
mote is that it serves as boomerang.
and makes every knock d boost" A
mass of American citizens
are beginning to realize as did the Vir-
ginian statesmen, George Mason and
Thomas Jefferson. about slavery. that
these inhuman laws are inconsistent
with our ideas of liberty and the foun-
dations of American government.
E. 3. HENDERSON.