Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/179

Rh he offered an amendment to the effect that any person or persons having purchased a ticket to be conveyed from one State to another, or paid the required fare, should receive the same treatment and be offered equal facilities and accommodation as are furnished all other persons holding tickets of the same class, without discrimination. In support of this amendment, he asserted the constitutional right of Congress to regulate commerce between the States, and that the action contemplated by his amendment came within the scope of this constitutional power. Denying that it was class or race legislation, he maintained that it was in line with the enlightened point of view of the age. The amendment was passed. His opponents, however, were not sufficiently progressive to leave his victory intact.

A defense of the civil rights of the Negro was brought prominently to the fore in the Fifty-first Congress. In his remarks on the affairs of South Carolina, Thomas E. Miller, a representative from that State, declared that the Negroes of South Carolina were suffering from several distinct causes. Among these causes he named lynch law, the petty system of theft which deprived them of the fruits of their daily toil, and injustice in the courts in which they had no rights where their interests and those of the whites conflicted. He demanded for them trial by jury, pay for their work, and the assurance that their lynchers would not become also their legislators. These considerations, he maintained, were of invaluable importance to the country. Miller, furthermore, deplored the action of the Governor of his State, which refused State aid to Negro schools and caused to be closed certain white colleges which had the courage to consider, in a sane way, the so-called Negro problem.

In the Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Congresses, the questions of the protection of the Negroes in the exercise of their civil rights demanded virtually the entire attention of