Traveller.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 382, 3 September 1903, Page 7

Traveller.

NEGRO ANTIPATHY. CHOCOLiTE-COLQRED gentlef&£js ma ». ia » glossy silk hat and an SaUK astrachan - trimmed overcoat, walked assertively into a London cafe, accompanied by a very pretty white woman. An Englishman and an American wore comparing countries at one table; ana, as the newly-arrived color theme appropriated another near at hand, the Ai ? c e » ican Be , fc down hi s imitation cocktail half finished and abruptly strode out of the room. Wondering greatly, his companion followed. ' I say, old chsp, are you ill ?' he asked anxiously. ' No; but I won't drink in the same room with a nigger,' retorted the Americaa, with unnecessary emphasis. ' Bat he looks very much a gentleman,' expostulated his friend, ' Gentleman •;' responded the American. ' I'm from South Carolina.' To the unenlightened mind this explanation is almost as vague as the resentment it covers. It is regarded here as a mystery that an American inetinctively classes a negro with the beasts of the field. Why should not a negro who looks and acts like a gentleman be treated as a gantleman P In London the person of African ancestry ia cordially accepted as a tenant in fashionable apartment houses, a diner in the best restaurants, a patron of the best theatres, and placed altogether oh a footing of equably which knows but one requirement—equal ability to p&y the piper. Sectional bitterness between North and South must be dying, but the memory remains keen of a thrashing administered by the last generation, chiefly on account of this self-same black man. Prom slavery to enfranchisement was too big a step, and the haughty Southerner, who to this day neglects his cotton crops to talk of the family honor, has never really forgiven his brother of the North for forcing him to accept a situation well sigh intolerable. , Theoretically the negro has been 'free and equal!' since President Lincoln issued his famous emancipation. Practically he has been nothing of the kind. In the South his slightest assumption of ' airs,' or effort to be as good as the white niaij, usually results in sudden death, and a jury of white men will acquit his murderer. 1 recall cne authentic cage which occurred in Charleston, Scuth Carolina, jnet two years ago. Here is the story, exactly as it was telegraphed to a Northern newspaper by a correspondent who waß not trying to be funny : 'Miss Annie Martin wss walking en State-street to-day, when Sara Wilson, a negro, jostled against her. Miss Martin went heme and told her brother. The negro said he had as good a right to walk on the street as anybody. The coroner's jury said the negro committed suicide.' To the emancipated slave the law has been unofficially laid down in the South something after this fashion :—You're free, and we can't help it. We can't beat you to death any more with raw hide whips, but there are other ways of making you keep your place. You will be permitted to live" as long as you hard by yourselves, travel in your own railway cars, which we are forced to provide—and uever attempt to associate with human beings under any consideration. Step over these lines, and you will die suddenly. For crimes wor&e than mere infringement of social laws there are punishments to fit with a rope and a lyrch committee as the mildest combination; and grades of torture, with fire, hot tar, cold water and other homely ingredients, always with death as th 6 inevitable sequel at the finish. Sun of these scientifically painful deaths must have made the eld friars of the Spanish Inquisition rattle their bones in sheer envy. I quite believe that President Roosevelt is the best-hated man in the South to-day. His market value depreciated alarmisgly when he invited Booker T, Washington to dinner at the White House. Booker T. Washington is mare of a gentleman than a great many whites in the South, and he has been entertained by well-known society people in London, Bat bad President Roosevelt invited Mr. Esau, the simian prodigy t or the late Nazeing pig to partake of his hospitality there would have been less resentmont south of Mason and Dixon's line, which marks the northern boundary of the msd'seyal torture territory, Mr Roosevelt has all the determination found in a man of the equare-jawed type, but his attempt to better the negro's condition in the Scuth by main force is likely to be a hard job. When a black postmistress was appointed for a little village, and the people made her life miserable, the strenuous rough rider promptly closed the post office. When he is not talking about his family honor, the Southerner in the big black '' wideawake' hat is usually indulging m the primitive habit of shooting. The blacks are arming themselves. The whites arc already armed. Is the question of the appointment of a colored customs collector for Charleston to be fought out with Winchesters in the wide streets of sleepy Charleston P If so—and it is entirely possible—the negro, whose memory ia rather keen at times, is sure to remember the frequent sessions of 'Judge Lyneh's' court, and to ' wipe something off the slate» with avidity. Like the leper elsewhere, the negro in the South is labelled' unclean/ When he gees to the theatre he must sit in an obscure gallery. If he has the temerity to get another person to buy him orchestra stalls, and then presents himself, he is cheerfully ejected by the attendants. I saw this happen in Pittsburg, a Northern city—loyal, of course, during the war of secession, but possessing enough antinegro sentiment to-day to bar coloured folk from the best seats in a place of amusement. c When a Southern negro travels he must rido in the negroes* carriage—the ' Jim Crow car' they call it. Ho cannot drink at a white man's bar. In a thousand and one ways his inferiority is kept constantly before him. In some portions of the South—New Orleans, for example—a negro pugilist cannot, fight a white And this prejudice is inconsistent. The whites will not tale letters from a colored Po3tmistrcss, but they will eat food cooked by a colored cook. They decline to pay custom duties to a dark-skinned oollector of the port, but they let the blackest of Africans wait upon them at table and black their boots, and valet them. The Southern gentleman may boast of his markmanship and prate of his family honor over interminable mint juleps, but if President Roosevelt decides to ram the negro dowa his throat I would like to have some money on Roosevelt.—Percival Phillips, in the« Express.'