“Of course, every race has its good sides, but the nigger has got to go, or else there won’t be any white America. In the meantime, he’s got to be kept in his place. He’s got to learn to respect the white man. Why, I read just the other day where they’re four million mulattoes in this country.”
“Well,” remarked the advertising man, dryly, “you know where they come from.”
He winked at the other Northerners, with a slight feeling of belonging to a superior group.
“What d’ye mean?”
“Well, the mulattoes come from either black mothers or white mothers. Therefore—”
The young Southerner grew very red.
“Sir, do you mean to insinuate that any white woman of the South—”
“Certainly not. I must say that I found the standards of morality in the South higher even than in Chicago or in the little Northern village where I was born. No, sir, the mulattoes are born in the South of black mothers. They are born among the purest, highest type of Anglo-Saxon manhood, upholding its traditions of race, religion and womanhood. I haven’t the least idea who their fathers are.”
The young man’s eyes blazed. Hamilton felt himself growing angry, but before he could say anything, the young man had half risen and was striking his palm excitedly with his fist.
“Sir,” he was crying, “you’ve made an insinuation against an entire class.”