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136 THE CRISIS

bility of accomplishing race segregation in cities by law, the support which the idea has found in many cities, of all sizes and widely scattered, illustrates a very general endorsement of the idea which underlay these various ordinances. It would be a very unfortunate thing if Negroes in the cities whose segregation ordinances have been invalidated, should get the impression as a result of the Supreme Court's decision that they can run counter to this idea and can flout the sentiment behind it. The advisability of passing segregation ordinances has been doubted by many southern white men. There is no disagreement that the conditions which gave rise to these ordinances should be guarded against. We believe that this is recognized by the wiser Negro leadership and concurred in as well.

The New Orleans Times Picayune says:

The decision settles the questions at issue and nullifies the ordinances passed. Communities that wish to put in force any racial segregation will have to do it as it is done in Louisiana, by public sentiment and mutual agreement and concessions.

As is so often the case, the real spokesman of the Bourbon fire eater is found in the Southerner who is writing editorials for the pro-German Evening Mail, New York City. This has the usual southern determination to break the law:

The result will probably be that a way will be found to break the law. That is the fate of laws that are based upon fictions, shams. As the result of the civil war we enfranchised the Negro. We gave him equal voting rights with the white man. The poor ignorant refugees from slavery, tools of demagogues and corruptionists, bade fair to sink the South into a state of anarchy and ruin. The South was saved because the states passed voting laws which nullified the federal enactment.

The Chicago Herald echoes this faintly:

Practically, however, conditions will not be greatly changed. Segregation ordinances are a recent development. Segregation as a municipal custom is, however, of long standing. Generations before the separation of the races was crystallized into law Negro residence districts were well defined in most southern cities. The annulment of the ordinances will not affect materially this situation. Social influences will continue to erect barriers without the sanction of lawmakers or courts.

Two papers make interesting comment,- one, the New York World, looks backward and expresses some surprise:

It must have been easy, therefore, for the Supreme Court of the United States, in deciding one of these cases, to hold unanimously that as the police power had been exercised in this instance in violation of property rights guaranteed by the Constitution to whites as well as blacks it was in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment, which speaks of life, liberty, and property.

Yet the same court has decided over and over again that states and municipalities may separate whites from blacks in railroad stations and trains, street cars, schools and cemeteries, and the same Fourteenth Amendment is just as insistent upon "the equal protection of the laws" as it is upon any property right whatsoever.

The other, the Saginaw, Mich., Courier Herald, looks forward, and the colored people of the United States should look with it:

This right has been explicitly denied to colored men in the southern states; and thus far no issue has ever been framed in a manner to reach the Supreme Court upon the naked question which is at stake. The present decision indicates the trend of the Court's mind; and it is the duty of the colored man and his friends now to proceed to test the greater question.

MASSACHUSETTS AND WEST VIRGINIA
In refusing to extradite an accused Negro, John Johnson, Governor McCall said to Governor Cornwell of West Virginia:
"The Massachusetts statutes require that demands for rendition of fugitives be referred to the Attorney General for an investigation as to the legality and expediency complying therewith. The case was carefully heard and some unusual features which it possessed, and especially the suggestion that there was danger of lynching or of an unfair trial, led to a very painstaking and careful investigation which was conducted by the Assistant Attorney General in charge of requisition cases, who is a very able lawyer and has, also, had very important experience as prosecuting attorney in one of our largest counties. He has just made his report to me. He reports that the real facts of the case had been grossly exaggerated at the hearings before him and that primary sources of evidence which should have been resorted to before indictment had not been probed at all. He finds that exaggerated reports of the crime have been generally circulated in the com-munity and that on account of the nature of these reports and the race of the defend-ant, there exists a prejudice which would be most difficult, if not impossible, of control by the most upright judge. He finds that there is grave danger that the defendant may be convicted of a crime of which he is in fact not guilty and for which he might suffer a long term of imprisonment or even the death penalty. In view of all the facts of the case and what seems to him danger of a serious miscarriage of justice, he recommends that the defendant be not returned. 
"I have no doubt, Sir, that mob law or the unjust enforcement of the law would be as abhorrent to you as it is to the history of the splendid State of West Virginia, which in the nobility of its origin and in the enrichment which it has imparted to our citizenship ranks among the great States of the Union. I have full confidence

THE LOOKING GLASS 137

that if the case were regarded and facts such as have been brought to the attention of the Attorney General were brought to yours, you would take action similar to that which he recommends. In the history of some of the greatest States of the Union there is far too much of gross injustice and the denial of rights of our citizens of African descent. This surely is not the time when any discrimination in the administration of justice should be permitted against a race which is bearing its full share of the burdens of our social fabric and furnishing many thousands of men who are training themselves to fight for their country. When American soldiers are fighting upon the battlefields of Europe for the freedom of the world we should exercise special care that as far as possible injustice should be banished from our own border. The trained officer who has considered this case for the Commonwealth having reported against the return of the defendant, I feel compelled to act accordingly, very greatly as I regret not to grant any request made by your Excellency."
The Boston Herald says:
Since we cannot know the facts as to this colored man's guilt or innocence, or what would have happened to him had he been turned over to West Virginia, we can only discuss the question on such general lines as these: Does the South deserve this slight from Massachusetts? Was it expedient to administer it? Can we afford to risk provoking retaliation? To these questions we think the affirmative able to present some case. Justice has palpably broken down in the south, so far as the Negro is concerned. There may, then, be a remedial value in such a hint as this from the North, just as the migration of the Negro laborers to our section has doubtless quickened the southern conscience to the realities of its position. We ought, besides, to indicate to West Virginia that her officers sent here to recover the fugitive cannot be in our jails impersonate so accurately browbeaters and ruffians.
The Buffalo Enquirer pertinently adds a few days later:
Governor McCall of Massachusetts a few days ago refused extradition in the case of a Negro fugitive from West Virginia jus-tice, giving as his reason apprehension that the Negro might be lynched on arrival in the state.
The Governor of West Virginia deemed that action an affront to his state and it certainly was not giving the "full faith and credit" in each state "to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state" commanded by the national Constitution. It was a declaration that West Virginia could not be trusted to grant justice to the fugitive. 
West Virginia had a right to feel ag-grieved until the shooting to death of an unidentified Negro in the Berwind jail by a mob Wednesday night. The lynching of that Negro, though under arrest and in jail, proves that governor McCall correctly understood West Virginia. He is entitled to an apology from the Governor of that state. 

SOUTHERN LABOR
SIDE LIGHTS were cast on the southern labor situation at the recent meeting of the American Federation of Labor at Buffalo. The special correspondent to the New York Evening Post says:
What is the actual relationship of the southern white man to the southern colored man, in the wage-working class? 
This question was threshed out for two hours, yesterday, when the delegate from the San Francisco Labor Council offered a resolution by the International Negro League, denouncing the treatment given the American Negro, especially in the South, and calling for fair play for him. After a veritable torrent of protest from delegates from the South, who said that the resolution was an insult to their section and would merely stir up new antagonisms, the report of the committee, shelving the whole matter was adopted.
Delegate Murphy, of San Francisco, explained, during the outburst, that San Francisco people knew little about the Negro question; no more, perhaps, than the South knew about the Japanese question. But he had been instructed to introduce this resolution offered by the International Negro League, in appreciation of the action of that body in getting colored men, brought to San Francisco to break a strike of culinary workers, to join the strikers. 
Though the entire discussion, which was heated in tone whenever the South was mentioned, there ran an evident anxiety on the part of the southern men to avoid any further advertising of the old industrial relations between the white and colored races in their section. the northward migration of the Negroes in the past two years seems to have effected a change in the comparative status of white labor at the South, and the southern trade unionist to have been made to realize that henceforth there must be co-operation in place of friendly patronage. The white trade unionist is not yet ready to restore political power to the Negro, but he recognizes the Negro's economic and industrial power as a portentous fact.
The italics are ours; also, we have italicised some words from the Laundryman's Guide, Atlanta, Ga., which is rejoicing over the presence of sixty thousand soldiers:
To handle such a deluge of new work necessarily involves the best kind of executive management and co-operation on the part of the Atlanta power laundries, but if we believe they are equal to the emergency if given anything like a fair show by the military powers that be. Since colored help is so largely employed in southern laundries and wage and hour restrictions are as yet