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70
THE CRISIS

Mr. Charles J Bonaparte continues, in the Baltimore Evening Sun, his attacks on the segregation movement. He says in one article:
Those who would have the Negro inhabitants of Baltimore compelled to live in dark, dirty alleys and narrow, unhealthy courts, and who, in general, long to keep them, as far as possible, poor, ignorant, vicious, criminal and diseased and a menace to the health, morals and order of the entire community, these people are not necessarily and consciously wicked; they are simply about four centuries behind their time. They feel toward a Negro very much as a subject of Ferdinand or Isabella might be expected to feel toward a Jew or a Moor. A distinguished cardinal, prominent in the papal government, has been (in all probability, very unjustly) often called 'medieval minded'; this description fits this first class of 'segregators' to a T. The character of their mental processes is illustrated with almost startling vividness in one of the letters sent to this paper. The author of this communication says:
"'Anyone who would advocate the mixture of the white and colored people, in so far as their living, willingly, side by side, is concerned, is, in my opinion, little skilled in the nature or history of mankind. Mr. Bonaparte knows well enough that there never was, nor is, nor ever will there be a time when white people, as a whole, will content themselves with having as their next-door neighbors fellow creatures who possess Ethiopian blood.'
"It is of no great consequence that this high authority evidently supposed 'Ethiopian' and 'Negro' to have the same meaning, and we need not dwell on his apparent belief that the race prejudices fostered by peculiar features of our national history are shared by white people all over the world; but is it quite consistent with sanity to suggest that a 'mixture of the white and colored people, in so far as their living willingly side by side is concerned,' is unheard of and is incredible? Precisely such a 'mixture' has existed in Baltimore ever since Baltimore has existed itself and exists to-day in scores of localities throughout the city. moreover, in all parts of the South, Negroes were for generations employed in all the most intimate relations of life by all the most prominent and influential white people; Negroes nursed their children, their aged, their sick, cooked and served their food, cleaned and cared for their homes and ministered to their personal comfort in every way possible."
The San Francisco Chronicle preens itself on the superiority of California race prejudice from the Baltimore variety:
"In Baltimore a colored family, not alleged to be other than respectable, moved into a house on a street which the whites apparently desired to reserve to themselves, and were bombarded with stones and bricks for three hours by white men and boys.
"That such a performance could go on for three hours without being stopped shows just what kind of a police force they keep in Baltimore. To get even, however, the Negroes assembled a great crowd of their own and began a retaliatory bombardment of the houses of the neighboring white people. Baltimore must be a fine city to live in. And thereupon the authorities could think of nothing else to do but to pass what they call a 'segregation ordinance,' prescribing what blocks may be inhabited by Negroes and which must be reserved for the occupation of whites. Such and ordinance, of course, can have no legal validity, but public opinion may cause it to be respected. If the street where these outrages took place was occupied exclusively by whites, and especially if it is a prominent residence street, one may concede that, knowing the feeling, the colored family was unwise to move in there, but they were within their legal rights, and a respectable Negro family is perhaps more to be respected than a white family of the same grade, for the negro family has more to contend with.
"There is this to be said about San Francisco that never in its history have acts of mob violence been committed against Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos or other alien races which go to make up our cosmopolitan population. Individual cases of aggression have, of course, occurred, but they have been dealt with precisely as we deal with breakers of the peace among whites. And yet there is the same racial antagonism which exists elsewhere. There is in the white race an inherent antagonism to social intercourse with those of other races. It does not extend to the educated and cultured classes of the alien races, but among the masses it persists.
"But there are no race hatreds here. The Negro or Asiatic is safe from mob violence because there is no mob feeling. Persons of any race may live anywhere in this city, without fear of attack and with the full assurance of the same protection that is extended to our own people. The neighbors on a fine residence street would probably unanimously object to having a colored family move in, but the family would not be disturbed. And what in this respect is true of San Francisco is true of California. And yet San Francisco is imagined at the East to be a hotbed of race proscription in its most virulent form. The fact is that in this respect, it is the most decent city in the country."

TILLMAN AND BLEASE.
"When it comes to pass that Senator Ben. Tillman denounces a man as a demagogue in unmeasured terms one feels like rubbing his eyes to know if he is awake. Senator Tillman has a history in the line of demagogy which is rather striking. When he came to the Senate eighteen years ago with his famous 'pitchfork' he was looked upon with about as much interest as if he had been the wild man from Borneo. he lived up to his local reputation as a man who could say bitter things, who could denounce everyone and everything not to his liking in language which reeked with vitriol and smelled of sulphur. But now Governor Blease, of South Carolina, represents the latest word - and we wish it were the last - in demagogy and makes Tillman seem like a reactionary. In the last few days the latter has paid his respects to the occupant of the chair he once filled in language which is picturesque and denunciatory, but which still fails to paint the whole picture. It may be said that Tillman tried his best to be a demagogue in his day, but that Blease has him beat a mile - to use the vernacular - on his own ground. After all, the fundamental difference between the two men is that Tillman is a man of education and not nearly so bad as he tried to make himself out, while it is impossible for anyone to be uqite such a man as Blease would have us think that he is. It does not speak well for South Carolina that her present claim to notoriety hangs on the rival vituperation of her senior Senator and her governor. When one thinks of the Laurences, the Pinckneys, the Hammonds, Calhouns, Butlers and Hamptons it must be admitted that, officially speaking, South Carolina has suffered a decline. If this be punishment for her sins it may be just retribution, but it is a little hard on the rest of the country." - Philadelphia Inquirer

MOB LAW.
The Chattanooga News has this editorial:
"In Mississippi, Thursday, a Negro was lynched. There is a serious doubt if he was guilty of the crime of which the mob accused him. In South Carolina recently a jury acquitted Will Fair, a Negro, who had been accused of the usual crime which lynchings follow. Fair, at the time of the excitement following the story of a woman that she had been assaulted, was saved from a mob which sought to lynch him only through a brave stand by the officials. It later developed that the woman's story was only the result of her fevered delirium. The only excuse the mob had to suspect that Fair had committed a crime was that he happened to pass the house at the time the woman was delirious from a spell of sickness.
"The mob clamored for the speedy conviction of the Negro, after its futile efforts to lynch him. The jury knew the Negro to be innocent, yet there was the shadow of the mob, which threatened to influence their verdict. Knowing the Negro innocent, the jury hesitated over the verdict for twenty hours. The tremendous lesson taught in the proving of the innocence of the Negro after the mob had almost succeeded in lynching him was hardly greater than that taught by the hesitation of the jury-their evident fear of declaring the Negro innocent in the face of the mob. Are even the courts of justice cowed by the blind fury of irresponsible and unthinking mobs?
"The mob sentiment exerted such an influence over the trial of Will Fair that South Carolina has been stirred to a great revolt against mob violence. 'The acquittal of Fair should serve to put an end forever to lynch law in the State,' is the view taken by the Columbia Record. But what of