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ber of white men rearing families by colored women, from the most influential citizen down to the common resident. Some of these women lived in beautiful houses surrounded by wealth and luxury, their children receiving the best schooling obtainable in leading white and Negro colleges. We found these women true to their men, and kind, lovable mothers. On the other hand we saw the evil side of this process of mixing-hundreds of girls in their teens with white babies! At the close of the war, we were told, there were very few "bright mulattoes" in the city, the great bulk of Negro population being black. This, we believe, points strongly toward the fact that there must have been an unusual amount of illicit miscegenation since the war. Fifty years hence there will be no black Negroes, as far as this city is concerned, if the present rate of mixing continues. What is the use of denying these things? The evidences of this deplorable condition are met in every city, hamlet and cross road.

We want legal intermarriages, not because we desire them, but because there is no other way out of the present deplorable condition. A judge, who presided over a municipal court in Georgia, believes that the man who mixes ought to be hung and the woman put in prison for life. Supposing the South undertook to establish

such a barbarous law, would that prevent miscegenation? Never. When a doctor is called in to treat a sick man, if he is a wise, up-to-date physician, he will say: "I will assist Nature all I can and let her run her course, and he will come out all right; if not, God alone can save. To give him drastic medicine-powerful poisonmay kill him and I would be the cause of his death." A state, like a wise physician, must let Nature run her course, applying such remedies (laws) as may best eliminate the wrongs of society, and bring about harmony, purity and peace. If the state meddles with the inherent rights of the subject, in the destruction of his peace and happiness, making unlawful that which he considers essential to his individual well-being, causing him to commit crime in obtaining his end, then the state is administering powerful poisons which may kill the body politic and cause anarchy and death to reign.

In the above argument we do not mean to convey the idea that we would sanction or encourage the black brute, or for that matter the white one, to obtain any legal sexual relation with a white or colored woman. We do not believe in the propagation of brutes in human form, white or black.

We believe in a sanctified sexual relation, for the purpose of procreation only. Any other

sexual relation is prostitution, and the state ought to punish this crime and protect society against it. But we believe it is the basest outrage for any state in the Union to prohibit any respectable man and woman of any two races in it to unite in legal marriage, classing them with the lewd and vicious, causing social ostracism and a legal persecution that tends to debasement and criminality. We believe this country would be far better off without any marriage laws than to have pernicious ones that encourage crime.

The American people, who ought to be the most democratic on earth, are the narrowest, most selfish, unreasonable creatures of any civilized beings in the world today. They are more exclusive and prejudiced than were the ancient Hebrews against foreign races, yet they cross-breed more extensively!

CANNOT PREVENT LOVE BUT WOULD NOT ADVISE MARRIAGE.— We refer to Miss Ovington, a white woman of the Negro settlement work in New York, as reported by an interviewer after the famous dinner for whites and blacks at the Cosmopolitan Club, which was so extensively discussed in the southern newspapers in 1908. She was asked: "Do you believe in intermarriage of the whites and blacks?" "No," she said, "I do not believe in the marriage of blacks and whites. I do not go

that far. But I do advocate the freest mingling of the races. There is no reason why white persons should not meet cultured Negro men and women on terms of absolute equality. How can you better arrive at a solution of the Negro problem than by consultation and co-operation with the intelligent blacks?

"But I would not hesitate to accept an invitation to dine with a Negro, just as I would not hesitate to meet with a Japanese, although I think marriage with a Japanese is as physically bad as with a Negro."

"So if a young Negro met and fell in love with a white girl of the tenement you would not advocate their mariage?" was asked.

"No, it would not be 'judicious,'" was her

answer.

If Miss Ovington believes it is not judicious for a colored man and white girl, who love each other, to marry, what does she mean? Is she, a northern woman, a believer in the custom of illicit mixing prevalent in the South? Must they live together out of wedlock? Is that her idea? Or does she advocate the barbarous method of stifling the affections, the blighting of two lives, the tearing apart of two souls, just because there is a difference in the color of their skin?

Miss Ovington does not know the up-to-date,

[graphic]

Children born to Caucasian mothers and Negro fathers in Alabama. Notice the cranium capacity of the boy baby.

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