- able per se, to say of a white man that he is a Negro or
akin to a Negro. The courts have placed this under the second class—that is, words disparaging to a person in his trade, business, or profession. The first case in point arose in South Carolina[1] in 1791, when the courts held that, if the words were true, the party (the white person) would be deprived of all civil rights, and moreover, would be liable to be tried in all cases, under the "Negro Act," without the privilege of a trial by jury, and that "any words, therefore, which tended to subject a citizen to such disabilities, were actionable." In 1818, it was held actionable by a court of the same State to call a white man's wife a mulatto.[2] But an Ohio[3] court, the same year, held that it was not slander, actionable per se, to charge a white man with being akin to a Negro inasmuch as it did not charge any crime or exclude one from society. The only explanation, apparently, of this conflict between the decisions of South Carolina and Ohio is that in the latter State it was not considered as much an insult to impute Negro blood to a white man as in the former. In North Carolina,[4] in 1860, there was the surprising decision that it was not actionable per se to call a white man a free Negro, even though the white man was a minister of the gospel.
The Supreme Court of Louisiana,[5] in 1888, said: "Under the social habits, customs, and prejudices prevailing in Louisiana, it cannot be disputed that charging a white man with being a Negro is calculated to inflict injury and damage. . . . No one could make such a charge, knowing it to be false, without understanding that its effect would be injurious and without intending to injure."
In 1900, a Reverend Mr. Upton delivered a temperance
