When
some of the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr.
Douglass, and one of them said to him: "I am sorry, Mr. Douglass,
that you have been degraded in this manner," Mr. Douglass straightened
himself up on the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: "They
cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man
can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of
this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me."
In one part of the country, where the law demands the separation
of the races on the railroad trains, I saw at one time a rather
amusing instance which showed how difficult it sometimes is to know
where the black begins and the white ends.
There was a man who was well known in his community as a Negro,
but who was so white that even an expert would have hard work to
classify him as a black man. This man was riding in the part of the
train set aside for the coloured passengers. When the train conductor
reached him, he showed at once that he was perplexed. If the man was
a Negro, the conductor did not want to send him to the white people's
coach; at the same time, if he was a white man, the conductor did not
want to insult him by asking him if he was a Negro. The official
looked him over carefully, examining his hair, eyes, nose, and hands,
but still seemed puzzled.
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