MORE ISSUES OF RACE IN THE POST WAR U.S.

1. "How can we ask more of the States formerly in rebellion than that they should be abreast of New England in granting rights and privileges to the colored race?"

2. "The humblest black rides with the proudest white on terms of perfect equality, and without the smallest symptom of malice or dislike on either side. I was, I confess, surprised to see how completely this is the case; even an English radical is a little taken aback at first."

3. "The Negroes are freely admitted to the theatre in Columbia and to other exhibitions, lectures, etc, though the whites avoided sitting with them if the hall be not crowded."

4. "In Columbia they are served at the bars, soda water fountains, and ice-cream saloons, though they were not accepted at hotels and other accommodations."

5. Charleston editor, "We care nothing whatever about Northern or outside opinion in this matter. Our opinion is that we have no more need for a Jim Crow system this year than we had last year, and a great deal less than we had twenty and thirty years ago."

6. "Jim Crow laws would be a needless affront to our respectable and well behaved colored people."

7. VA, 1886, "Nobody here objects to sitting in political conventions with Negroes. Nobody here objects to serving on juries with Negroes. No lawyer objects to practicing law in court where Negro lawyers practice…Colored men are allowed to introduce bills into the Virginia legislature, and in both branches of this body Negroes are allowed to sit, as they have a right to sit."

8. "Occasionally the Negro met no segregation when he entered restaurants, bars, waiting rooms, theatres, and other public places of amusement."

9. 1885, "In Virginia they may ride exactly as white people do and in the same cars"

10. 1885, traveled from Boston to South Carolina, once there, "I put a chip on my shoulder, and inwardly dares any man to knock it off…bold as a lion I took a seat at a table with white people, and I was courteously served. The whites at the table appeared not to note my presence. Thus far I had found travelling more pleasant than in some parts of New England."

11. Same guy, "Negroes dine with whites in a railroad saloon

Taken from C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955)


Race Relations to the 1890s

As Richard Hofstadter once wrote, "For historians, violence is a difficult subject, diffuse and hard to cope with."

"Without multiplying words," a clergyman wrote in 1893, "I wish to say that hell is an improvement upon the United States when the negro is involved." From 1882 to 1903 lynch mobs in the United States took the lives of approximately 1985 blacks.