"Whereas, On the twenty-ninth day of January, eighteen ninety-six, the Reverend Benjamin W. Arnett, D.D., of Wilberforce, Ohio, senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, president of the board of trustees of Wilberforce University, and member of many learned societies, was refused entertainment at certain reputable hotels in the city of Boston, because he was a colored man, in spite of the statute laws against discrimination on account of color; therefore,
"Resolved, That the senate and house of representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in general court assembled, successors of those bodies which repeatedly elected Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United States, and for four years received messages from John A. Andrew, hereby express their severest reprobation of such discrimination and their firm conviction of the truth of the clause of the Declaration of Independence wherein all men are declared to be created equal; and it is further
"Resolved, That still more to be reprobated is the sentiment of any part of the public against any class of our fellow citizens whereby such discrimination is rendered possible, and that a vigorous campaign for statute rights by the persons most aggrieved will meet the hearty approval and coöperation of the two branches of the General Court." This is very significant as showing the actual attitude of the hotels of Boston toward receiving Negroes. Whether the "vigorous campaign" was conducted one cannot tell; certainly no case appears to have reached the courts. And there is in Boston at present a Negro hotel.
The manager of the Lucerne Hotel in New York City in 1905, refused to lease a suite to a woman because she
