ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat further back in order to make a place for a white man. I traveled a good deal, but I never saw a white person asked to vacate a back seat to make place for a Negro. I saw cars filled with white people, both front seats and back, and many Negroes standing.
At one time, when I was on a car the conductor shouted: "Here, you nigger, get back there," which the Negro, who had taken a seat too far forward, proceeded hastily to do. Of course, I am talking here of conditions as they are in Atlanta. I may find different circumstances in other cities, which I hope to develop when the time comes.
No other one point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among the Negroes as the Jim Crow car. I don't know how many Negroes replied to my question: "What is the chief cause of friction down here?" with a complaint of their treatment on street cars and in railroad trains.
Why the Negro Objects to the Jim Crow Car
Fundamentally, of course, they object to any separation which gives them inferior accommodations. This point of view—and I am trying to set down every point of view, both colored and white, exactly as I find it, is expressed in many ways. "We pay first-class fare," said one of the
