It is hinted by the Supreme Court that this is in some way a question of social equality. It is claimed that social equality cannot be enforced by law. Nobody thinks it can. This is not a question of social equality, but of equal rights. A colored citizen has the same right to ride upon the cars—to be fed and lodged at public inns, and to visit theatres, that I have. Social equality is not involved.
The Federal soldiers who escaped from Libby and Andersonville, and who in swamps, in storm, and darkness, were rescued and fed by the slave, had no scruples about eating with a negro. They were willing to sit beneath the same tree and eat with him the food he brought. The white soldier was then willing to find rest and slumber beneath the negro's roof. Charity has no color. It is neither white nor black. Justice and Patriotism are the same. Even the Confederate soldier was willing to leave his wife and children under the protection of a man whom he was fighting to enslave.
Danger does not draw these nice distinctions as to race or color. Hunger is not proud. Famine is exceedingly democratic in the matter of food. In the moment of peril, prejudices perish. The man fleeing for his life does not have the same ideas about social questions, as he who sits in the Capitol, wrapped in official robes. Position is apt to be supercilious. Power is sometimes cruel. Prosperity is often heartless.
This cry about social equality is born of the spirit of caste—the most fiendish of all things. It is worse than slavery. Slavery is at least justified by avarice—by a desire to get something for nothing—by a desire to live in idleness upon the labor of others—but the spirit of caste is the offspring of natural cruelty and meanness.
Social relations depend upon almost an infinite number of influences and considerations. We have our likes and dislikes. We choose our companions. This is a natural right. You cannot force into my house persons whom I do not want. But there is a difference between a public house and a private house. The one is for the public. The private house is for the family and those they may invite. The landlord invites the entire public, and he must serve those who come if they are fit to be received. A railway is public, not private. It derives its powers and its rights from the State. It takes private land for public purposes. It is incorporated for the good of the public, and the public must be served. The railway, the hotel, and the theatre, have a right to make a distinction between people of good and bad manners—between the clean and the unclean. There are white people who have no right to be in any place except a bath-tub, and there are colored people in the same condition. An unclean white man should not be allowed to force himself into a hotel, or into a railway car—neither should the unclean colored. What I claim is, that in public places, no distinction should be made on account of race or color. The bad black man should be treated like the bad white man, and the good black man like the good white man. Social equality is not contended for—neither between white and white, black and black, nor between white and black.
In all social relations we should have the utmost liberty—but public duties should be discharged and public rights should be recognized, without the slightest discrimination on account of race or color. Riding in the same cars, stopping at the same inns, sitting in the same theatres, no more involve a social question, or social equality, than speaking the same language, reading the same books, hearing the same music, traveling on the same highway, eating the same food, breathing the same air, warming by the same sun, shivering in the same cold, defending the same flag, loving the same country, or living in the same world.
And yet, thousands of people are in deadly fear about social equality. They imagine that riding with colored people is dangerous—that the chance acquaintance may lead to marriage. They wish to be protected from such consequences by law. They dare not trust themselves. They appeal to the Supreme Court for assistance, and wish to be barricaded by a constitutional amendment. They are willing that colored women shall prepare their food—that colored waiters shall bring it to them—willing to ride in the same cars with the porters and to be shown to their seats in theatres by colored ushers—willing to be nursed in sickness by colored servants. They see nothing dangerous—nothing repugnant, in any of these relations,—but the idea of riding in the same car, stopping at the same hotel, fills them with fear—fear for the future of our race. Such people can be described only in the language of Walt Whitman. "They are the immutable, granitic pudding-heads of the world.".
Liberty is not a social question. Civil equality is not social equality. We are equal only in rights. No two persons are of equal weight, or height. There are no two leaves in all the forests of the earth alike—no two blades of grass—no two grains of sand—no two hairs. No two any-things in the physical world are precisely alike. Neither mental nor physical equality can be created by law, but law recognizes the fact that all men have been clothed with equal rights by Nature, the mother of us all.
The man who hates the black man because he is black, has the same spirit as he who hates the poor man because he is poor. It is the spirit of caste. The proud useless despises the honest useful. The parasite idleness scorns the great oak of labor on which it feeds, and that lifts it to the light.
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart—the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenceless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.