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34 THE CRISIS or patiently endure, but there is no escape from the humiliation and discomfort of railway travel. The colored man and his family must travel and must in traveling submit to conditions that are galling to manhood and to decency, conditions that no decent, self-respecting people should endure. Everywhere the colored people are bitter in their protest against the accommodations and treatment given them by the railways. Statutes of the states in providing for separate accommodations also require that these accommodations for both races shall be equal and therefore the objectionable features of the Jim Crow car are illegal and can be corrected. It is hoped that the publication of Prof. Gregory's articles will arouse public sentiment against these conditions and that the Association will receive strong support in its fight to secure what the laws allow-equal accommodations for both races on the railways of the country. The Association would like to have aggravated cases of unfair or unjust treatment on Jim Crow cars sent in the form of affidavits to Prof. Montgomery Gregory in care of the N.A.A.C.P., 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. In connection with Professor Gregory's report we quote below in part what a southern white man says about the "Jim Crow" car. Professor W. O. Scroggs, of Louisiana University, in an address delivered before the Southern Sociological Congress at Atlanta in 1913 said" "Railways, however, while providing separate accommodations, have not undertaken to make these equal for both races. A short time ago I made a journey which involved travel on local trains over six different railway lines, and on only one of these did I find equal conveniences for white and black. On two trains the whites were furnished with modern vestibuled coaches, while the Negro coaches were of the antiquated open-platform pattern, very dingy and much less comfortable than the cars for whites. The rear half of one of these inferior coaches served as a smoking compartment for white men, while in the forward half Negro men and women, smokers and non-smokers, were herded together, with a single toilet for all. Another train carried its white passengers in a steel coach and its Negro patrons in a coach of wood. When I commented upon this to a gentlemen from the West, he remarked: 'Well, I guess it costs the road more to kill a white man than a nigger, and so it takes extra precautions for us.' * * * * * * "This unfair treatment of the Negro by common carriers is inexcusable. No honest Southerner would countenance a white merchant's selling his Negro customer inferior goods at the same price at which he supplied his white patrons with a better article. Yet we allows our railways to do practically the same thing with impunity." BRANCHES AND LOCALS Columbus: This branch has been influential in securing the suspension of a police officer who, it was alleged, without warrant or excuse arrested Waldo and Harold Tyler, sons of Mr. Ralph W. Tyler, as they were returning to their home late at night. The boys were taken to the city prison and detained until two in the morning. Complaint was made against the officer by the Branch and the boys were represented by Mr. Robert B. Barcus of the Branch Executive Committee. At the exercises held in St. Paul's A. M. E. Church to commemorate Emancipation Day, Dr. Washington Gladden gave a stirring address tracing the history of events which led up to emancipation and the change in public opinion in the country from the almost universal pro-slavery opinion of Pierce to the radical anti-slavery doctrine of Lincoln. He held out the hope that in time there would be another radical change in public opinion on the race problem which would afford the Negro the right to enjoy full manhood rights and to work out his own salvation without let or hindrance. Des Moines: The third quarterly meeting of the Des Moines Branch at the Union Congregational Church September 22d, was in honor of the celebration of the fifty-third anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and of the recent decision
