The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, page 271, Apr. 1885, U. of Illinois Press

The page presentation framework of the Booker T. Washington papers is designed to provide researchers worldwide with searchable access to the thousands of pages comprising the fourteen volumes, most of which are out of print. Adapted from the National Academy Press's Open Book framework, this framework allows searching down to the page level, provides sorting of search results chronologically, enables easy navigation across multiple volumes, and allows page-by-page local printing (via PDF) of every page.

[ Top of Page ]

[ Home ]

[ Contact Us ]

[ Help ]

OCRed data provided for searching only.
APRIL · 1885 as closed, making little difference between this and the smoking car; (c) on some of the roads the colored passengers are carried in one end of the baggage car, there being a partition between them and the baggage or express; (d) only a half coach is given to the colored people and this one is almost invariably an old one with low ceiling and it soon becomes crowded almost to suffocation and is misery to one knowing the effects of impure air. The seats in the coach given to colored people are always greatly inferior to those given the whites. The car is usually very filthy. There is no carpet as in the first class coach. White men are permitted in the car for colored people. Whenever a poorly dressed, slovenly white man boards the train he is shown into the colored half coach. When a white man gets drunk or wants to lounge around in an indecent position he finds his way into the colored department. Plainly this treatment is not an equivalent for value received. Why should the railroads be allowed to make a discrimination that no other business man or business corporation makes? I enter a dry goods store in Tuskegee, buy a yard of calico, I am shown to just as good a counter, am treated just as politely by the clerk and for the same money receive just as good (though a separate) piece of calico as the white man. I subscribe for the Advertiser. For the same money you send me a paper printed just as nicely, done up as well and that costs you just as much in every way as the one sent a white subscriber. A lawyer is engaged to take a case for me. For the same money he seats me in his office, talks to me just as pleasantly and works for me just as hard before the courts as for a white client. Why should the railroads be an exception to these rules. This unjust practice toward the negro cuts off thousands of dollars worth of negro travel every year, while just treatment of the negro would stop no white travel. There are ten times when I would take my wife or a lady friend on the railroad that I only do so once, and then am compelled to, because I shudder at the mere thought of the accommodations. Numbers of other colored men have expressed the same feeling. The mere thought of a trip on a railroad brings to me a feeling of intense dread and I never enter a railroad coach unless compelled to do so. On account of these discriminations the New Orleans Exposition has lost many dollars. Since the Exposition opened I have asked many colored people in Northern States if they were going to 271