rights—constitution or no constitution—which the upper caste possessed. Inequality became thus the chief corner stone of the new Southern edifice. Under this society there grew up two moral standards and two legal standards for the government of the races. For example what under such a system is bad for a black man to do to a member of the white race might not be regarded as bad at all if done by a white man to a member of the black race. The cruel and iniquitous sex relations of the races in the South has grown out of this caste system. Under it we have the double moral standard and the double legal standard operating throughout that section with a vengeance. A white man cannot with impunity seduce another white man’s daughter or wife in the South. But were he to seduce a colored man’s daughter or wife the case would be wholly different. No bastardy process lies in favor of the colored girl as lies in favor of her white sister under like circumstances, and no maintenance could she possibly obtain for her child from the white man who wronged her. Intermarriage between the races has been made illegal by every Southern state and by some Northern states also. Such a law makes colored women the safe quarry of white men, and nowhere in the South do law or public opinion impose upon them any deterrent punishment, moral or legal, for their crime, but quite the opposite. For such men do not lose standing in Southern society or the church or the state in consequence of their sin. In all this sexual inequality and iniquity the South has eyes but sees not and ears but hears not what is taking place everywhere in its midst.

On the other hand what happens to the black man who ventures to look upon a white woman with love or carnal desire, or who is even suspected of doing so? Ask Judge Lynch, ask the blind and murderous sex fury of white men, the red male rage of Southern mobs. Nevertheless black men cannot be made to see the difference between the lust of black men and the lust of white men, or to acknowledge the justice of such a distinction. Hold the blacks responsible by all means for the crimes they commit, but hold the whites responsible also for creating social and legal conditions which lead directly to the growth of crime among both races. Race and color not efficiency and character are the basis of the Southern caste system, and such a system produces unavoidably ill-will, oppressions, and resentments between the races which lead directly or indirectly to the commission of crime. For all those who are black, regardless of what nature and education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of social and political inferiority, and all those who are white, regardless of what nature and education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of social and political superiority, and for no other or better reason than that those of the first class are black, and those of the second class are white. Civilization finds it well nigh impossible to advance under such iron bound conditions and against such a fatal obstruction to progress, while civic righteousness must certainly share the same fate. Such social injustice is as sure to provoke crime as stagnant water is to produce disease. Yet, in spite of this iniquitous caste system the leaven of democracy, of equality has found lodgment in the black man’s mind, and he craves the chance to become all that the white man has become and to do all that the white man does by virtue of his American freedom and citizenship. Nothing less than this is going to satisfy the blacks, the Southern caste system and appearances in spots among the blacks themselves, to the contrary notwithstanding.

But there is yet another aspect of the same subject, which tends to produce the same result. I refer to the Southern policy of civil and political repression and oppression of its colored population in order to keep them within their caste of inferiority and subordination to the whites. Discontent under such oppressive