Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/65

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people of Baltimore. The ticket-seller was relieved from further duty, and notice was immediately given that any well-behaved person could have any seat in the hall by paying the advertised price for it. A few coloured people occupied reserved seats here and there on the main floor, but it was never heard that any one received harm from such a radical innovation in Baltimore customs. The audience were apparently so interested in the singing that they forgot to study the colour of their neighbours' faces.

The Singers were quite accustomed to being refused entertainment at hotels because of their colour. This was not always, however, for fear merely of offending other guests. In one case, in Illinois, the hotel servants squarely refused to wait on the "nagurs," as they pronounced the word, and the Singers were their own boot-blacks and chamber-maids. At another hotel the landlord met a similar refusal by paying the mutineers their wages and sending them en masse into the street.

But the most offensive manifestation of caste prejudice that ever flaunted itself in the face of the party occurred during this campaign, at Princeton, New Jersey. They had been invited by President McCosh, and other members of the Faculty of Princeton College, to visit the place, and one of the churches had been tendered them for their concert. A little while before it was time for the concert to begin, they learned that an out-of-the-way corner of the church had been set aside for coloured people, and that they were refused admission to any other