possessions. They are not entitled to life, liberty or property if the
courts should decide they are not, and yet in this all-important tribunal
they are denied all voice, except as parties and witnesses, and here and
there a negro lawyer is permitted to appear. One vote on the grand jury
might prevent an indictment, and save disgrace and the risk of public
trial; while one vote on the petit jury might save a life or a term of
imprisonment, for an innocent person pursued and persecuted by powerful
enemies.

With no voice in the making of the laws, which they are bound to obey, nor
in their administration by the courts, thus tied and helpless, the negroes
were proscribed by a system of legal enactments intended to wholly nullify
the letter and spirit of the war amendments to the national organic law.
This crusade was begun by enacting a system of Jim-Crow car laws in all
the Southern States, so that now the Jim-Crow cars run from the Gulf of
Mexico into the national capital. They are called, "Separate Car Laws,"
providing for separate but equal accommodations for whites and negroes.
Though fair on their face, they are everywhere known to discriminate
against the colored people in their administration, and were intended to
humiliate and degrade them.

Setting apart separate places for negroes on public carriers, is just as
repugnant to the spirit and intent of the national Constitution, as would
be a law compelling all Jews or all Roman Catholics to occupy compartments
specially set apart for them on account of their religion. If these
statutes were not especially aimed at the negro, an arrangement of
different fares, such as first, second and third classes, would have been
far more just and preferable, and would have enabled the refined and
exclusive of both races to avoid the presence of the coarse and vicious,
by selecting the more expensive fare. Still these laws have been upheld by