Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/133

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to a proposed act of Congress, introduced by Hon. Charles Sumner at the last session, and now on file in the Senate of the United States, known as the 'Supplemental Civil Rights Bill,' and all other measures intended or calculated to equalize or amalgamate the Negro race with the white race, politically or socially, and especially do they proclaim unceasing opposition to making Negroes eligible to public offices, to sit on juries, and to their admission into public schools where white children attend, and to the admission on terms of equality with white people in the churches, public conveyances, places of amusement, or hotels, and to any measure designed or having the effect to promote the equality of the Negro with the white man in any of the relations of life, or which may possibly conduce to such result.

"That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested to vote against and use all honorable means to defeat the passage by Congress of the bill referred to in the foregoing resolution, known as the 'Supplemental Civil Rights Bill,' and all other measures of a kindred nature, and any and every attempt to make the Negro the peer of the white man."

Upon the heels of this resolution, in 1875, Delaware[18] enacted a statute on March 15, 1875, which provided that no keeper of an inn, tavern, hotel, or restaurant, or other place of public entertainment or refreshment of travelers, guests, or customers, should be obliged by law to furnish entertainment or refreshment to persons whose reception or entertainment by him would be offensive to the major part of his customers, or would injure his business. The term "customers" was taken to include all who sought