Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/378

 and humiliation of being denied admission to hotels maintained exclusively for white persons. If separate schools were provided, Negro children would be free to pursue, unhampered by requirements prescribed for the more developed race and unembittered by continuous manifestations of race prejudice, a curriculum especially adapted to their own needs. Wherever separate railroad and street car accommodations were provided, a Negro might enter the car or compartment reserved for his race and go his way in peace, unmolested by the thoughtless or vicious of the other race. The result, therefore, of the honest enforcement of race distinctions would be to the advantage of the weaker race.

OBLITERATION OF RACE DISCRIMINATIONS

The people of the different sections and races, instead of inquiring into the truth or falsity of such a conclusion, have been agitating the theoretical right and wrong of race distinctions. Meanwhile, indications are that legalized race distinctions have been unfairly enforced. For instance, statutes require that equal accommodations be given Negro passengers in public conveyances; yet, while people have been debating the constitutionality and justification of the "Jim Crow" laws, railroad companies have been compelling Negroes to occupy uncomfortable and unsanitary coaches and waiting-rooms, and this though Negroes paid the same fare as white passengers. Furthermore, while they have been arguing the constitutionality of the suffrage laws of the South, white registrars have been putting unfair tests to Negro applicants for registration, and by so doing have made the laws a tool by