poor whites, I relate a tragedy in the life of a friend of mine, who was
well known and respected in the town of Rayville, Louisiana.

Sewall Smith, for many years ran the leading barber shop for whites in the
town of Rayville, and was well-liked and respected by the leading white
men of the entire parish. At the suggestion of his customers he bought
Louisiana state lands while they were cheap, before the railroad was put
through between Vicksburg and Shreveport; and as the road passed near his
lands he was thereby made a rich man, as wealth goes in those parts. His
good fortune, however, did not swell his head and he remained the same to
his friends. He became so useful in his parish that there was never a
public gathering of the leading white business men that he was not invited
to it, and he was always on the delegations to all the levee or river
conventions sent from his parish. He was chosen to such places by white
men exclusively; and in his own town he was as safe from wrong or injury,
on account of his race or color, as any white man.

After the trains began to run through Rayville, on the Shreveport road, he
had occasion to visit the town of Ruston, in another parish some miles in
the interior, and as he got off at the depot, a barefoot, poor white boy
asked to carry his satchel. Smith was a fine looking mulatto, dressed
well, and could have easily been taken for a white man, and the boy might
not have known at the time he was a negro. When he arrived at his stopping
place he gave the boy such a large coin that he asked permission to take
his satchel back to the train on the following day when he was to return.
The next day the boy came for the satchel, and they had nearly reached the
depot about train time, when they passed a saloon where a crowd of poor
whites sat on boxes whittling sticks. The sight of a negro having a white
boy carrying his satchel quite enraged them, and after cursing and abusing
Smith and the boy, they undertook to kick and assault Smith. Smith