the "Jim Crow" coach, thinking that she was a Negro. After she had entered the car, a Negro passenger recognized her and said, "Lor', Miss Rosa, this ain't no place for you; you b'long in the cars back yonder." Mrs. Stone rode on to Suffolk, the next station, and left the train. She sued the railroad company for one thousand dollars damages. It appeared that Mrs. Stone was much tanned: this probably caused the conductor to mistake her for a Negro.
It will have been noticed that all the courts which have held it actionable per se to call a white person a Negro have been in the Southern States. It is doubtful whether the courts in other sections would take the same view, and even Kentucky, a Southern State, has refused so to do. The attitude of the court depends upon whether it is the consensus of opinion among the people of the community that it is injurious to a white man in his business and social relations to be called a Negro.
The above is clearly another race distinction. Although there are many decisions to the effect that it is actionable per se to call a white person a Negro, not one can be found deciding whether it would be so to call a Negro a white person. One event looks, in a measure, in this direction. The city of Asheville, North Carolina, in 1906, contracted with a printer to have a new city directory issued. The time-honored custom of the place was to distinguish white and Negro citizens by means of an asterisk placed before the names of all Negroes. After the directory had been distributed, it was found that asterisks had been placed before the names of two highly respected white citizens, thus indicating that they were
