Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/425

to white people paying the same fare, while in Tennessee, as I am informed, colored passengers are invariably turned into the smoking-cars. I found at several railroad stations in the South separate waiting-rooms for colored people, a discrimination which is not made at the North. I have never met any colored people as guests in the dining-rooms of first-class hotels, either at the South or at the North. I have seen colored people sitting in the same rows with whites at lectures, in at least one or two instances in the South, and several times in the North. In the South the two races do not attend the same churches and schools, and this, as I have been assured by colored and white people alike, in accordance, not only with the wishes of the whites, but also with the preference of the colored people themselves, who in many places have shown a desire even to have their white teachers supplanted by persons of color. In the North, whites and negroes have sat together in schools and churches, and here and there do so now; but, if I am rightly informed, in most places where the number of colored people is considerable, they have separated. This separation is, of course, more voluntary in the North than in the South, but it is generally favored by colored preachers and teachers for business reasons. We hear, from time to time, of inoffensive colored people being brutally ejected from public places and means of conveyance, and such stories come unquestionably oftener from the South than from the North. The spirit which prompts such brutalities is, of course, the same everywhere. It is more frequently met with in the South, partly because the contact between the two races is more frequent, and partly because there is still a larger class of whites in the South who feel so little confident, and therefore so restless, concerning their superiority over the negro, that they avail themselves of every chance to make sure of it by some outward