Cayton's weekly. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1916-1921, 1920-07-17

citizen has belongs to ALL
The law is no hespector of persons 1t
gives every man the right to fair trial by
a jury of his peers. 1t regards an attack
on any citizen whether by individual or by
mob as a crime, to be prosecuted and pun
ished as such. The Supreme Court of the
United States has held Grandfather laws
and segregation ordinances to be unconstitu-
tional. and has declared peonage illegal
The law is clear, and it is idle to discuss
what is settled. It is not the law but it's
enforcement which is wanting, and I prefer
to discuss existing conditions
Speaking in Atlanta, it is in every way
fitting that | should take as my text the
words of your own great orator, Henry W.
Grady:
''The problem of the South is to carry
on within her body polite two separate
races, equal in civil and political rights and
nearly equal in numbers. She must carry
those races in peace, for discord means ruin
She must carry them separately for assimi-
latiOn means debasement. She must carry
them in equal justice for to this she is
pledged in honor and in gratitude She
must carry them even unto the end for in
human probability she will never be quit
of either'
When the doctrine thus stated is recog-
nized and applied throughout this country
the work of this Association will have been
done Equality Gin civil and political
rights, . ''equal JUSTICE and that "peace"
which assures them the undisturbed enjoy
ment of their lives, their liberty and their
property, except so far as either is taken by
due process Of law are all that the colored
people ask. But it must be understood that
when Mr.. Grady says eve must carry them
separately this cannot be interpreted as
meaning that segregation which the Supreme
Court of the United States has declared for
hidden by the Constitution, or any separa-
ton inconsistent with "equal civil and DO
litical rights and "equal justice'' to all.
the simple test is to be found in the Golden
Rule which is the foundation of the Chris
tlanlty that we all profess We have only
to lmgaine the conditions reversed and con-
slder what treatment white men would resent
II suffered at the hands of coored men to
realize what the colored man resents at the
hands of his white neighbours We stand
here to ask for what Grady asked-no more
and no less.
The fear that if their rights are granted.
the colored men will seek to establish un
welcome personal relations is without anv
Just foundation. Social relations are not
regulated by law but by the tastes of men,
and If there exists between the races an
instructive antipathy, as many claim, there
IS no danger of social intimacy or inter-
marriage, which every individual may con-
troll for himself or herself. If we we're to
deny equal civil and political rights to every
man whom we would not willingly receive
as son-ln-law, large majority of man.
KIND would be ostracized and the world
would be governed by very small oligarchy.
Ihe rights of men are not to be determined
by any such test.
The people Of the South are wont to speak
OF the Negro question" and to insist that
1t is for them to deal with. We of the North
decline to be thus excluded from the national
family. We recognize that the ancestors of
us all, North and South alike, are respon
slble for the situation which confronts their
children, and since we share this RESPONSE
bl1ty and are exposed to the dangers of the
situation, we feel that it is the problem of
the nation as whole, and that we must
help to deal with it. Chicago, Springfield
and East St. Louis in Illinois, Omaha in
Nnhn