T H E A ME RICA N -SC A N D IN A VIA N Ii E VIE TV 
493 
times better prepared and morally much more entitled to share in its 
own government, it has not one representative in the national Con¬ 
gress, nor in a single legislature of the south, and hardly any political 
office that is within the gift of a former slave state. And yet more 
than one-tenth of the entire nation is colored, and in at least two of 
the southern states colored people constitute a majority of the popu¬ 
lation. They have lawyers, physicians, and educators; universities, 
colleges, and financial institutions. They have produced inventors 
and artists, the finest musicians and the most notable music of the 
nation. In proportion to their numbers they have the largest church 
membership of the nation. They have bought much land and built 
all sorts of business enterprises under handicaps and unfair wages. 
They have sustained the greatest reputation for loyalty as a group, 
and have produced some of the best soldiers in the American army. 
And yet as the matter stood ten years ago, and as it stands for 
the most part to-day, the freedom and security of the colored popu¬ 
lation are restricted by Jim Crowism, Segregation, Disfranchisement, 
Peonage, and Lynching. We shall describe these evils and disabili¬ 
ties very briefly, and as briefly state the case of some of the organiza¬ 
tions and agencies that are endeavoring to better the conditions and 
"solve the problem.” 
Jim, Crowism. This term refers generally to the treatment of the colored popula¬ 
tion on the railways of the southern states, where they are required to occupy separate 
waiting rooms from all other peoples, and to ride in separate coaches or parts of 
coaches, their allotted section most often being the end of a baggage car or a part of 
the smoker. It is needless to remark that these separate accommodations seldom, if 
ever, give the colored people equal conveniences, although they pay exactly the same 
fares which white people pay. And yet the entire colored group, regardless of age, 
culture, refinement, or sex, is forced to occupy these separate and inferior accommoda¬ 
tions. The Jim Crow car is undoubtedly the worst evil with which colored people have 
to contend, not even excepting lynching. 
General Segregation. Other forms of segregation beside the Jim Crow cars, 
meet the colored citizen everywhere in the south, and in many instances in the north. 
The colored traveler, however educated and well-to-do, cannot get first-class hotel 
accommodations in any southern city nor in most northern cities. Up to the present 
time the colored people have been able to build very few good hotels of their own, 
either because of the smallness of their numbers or because of comparative poverty 
and small patronage. Most theatres offer colored persons seats only on the top floor, 
and many offer them no seats at all. In all the south they have separate and inferior 
public schools and are not admitted to the state universities. In some places they 
are not admitted to the libraries, parks, and art galleries. Everywhere they pay 
the same rate of taxes on the same tax basis as white people. 
Disfranchisement. The colored people are undoubtedly denied the right to vote 
in most of the great south, sometimes by force but more often by legal subterfuges. 
The constitution of the nation confers equal suffrage upon all natural-born citizens, 
and the laws of the various states do not generally discriminate in their letter against 
colored folk, but in the whole of the south the administration of law is in the hands 
of white people, who do discriminate. The right to vote is fundamental in the solu¬ 
tion of this race problem, for with a just ballot the colored population could sooner 
overcome the other difficulties. For example, if colored folk had their just vote in 
