The right of every American citizen to select his own society and invite
whom he will to his own parlor and table should be sacredly respected. A
man’s house is his castle, and he has a right to admit or refuse
admission to it as he may please, and defend his house from all
intruders even with force, if need be. This right belongs to the
humblest not less than the highest, and the exercise of it by any of our
citizens toward anybody or class who may presume to intrude, should
cause no complaint, for each and all may exercise the same right toward
whom he will.
When he quits his home and goes upon the public street, enters a public
car or a public house, he has no exclusive right of occupancy. He is
only a part of the great public, and while he has the right to walk,
ride, and be accommodated with food and shelter in a public conveyance
or hotel, he has no exclusive right to say that another citizen, tall or
short, black or white, shall not have the same civil treatment with
himself. The argument against equal rights at hotels is very improperly
put upon the ground that the exercise of such rights, it is insisted, is
social equality. But this ground is unreasonable. It is hard to say what
social equality is, but it is certain that going into the same street
car, hotel, or steamboat cabin does not make any man society for another
any more than flying in the same air makes all birds of one feather.
Two men may be seated at the same table at a hotel; one may be a Webster
in intellect, and the other a Guiteau in feebleness of mind and morals,
and, of course, socially and intellectually, they are as wide apart as
are the poles of the moral universe, but their civil rights are the
same. The distinction between the two sorts of equality is broad and
plain to the understanding of the most limited, and yet, blinded by
prejudice, men never cease to confound one with the other, and allow
themselves to infringe the civil rights of their fellow-citizens as if
those rights were, in some way, in violation of their social rights.
That this denial of rights to us is because of our color, only as color
is a badge of condition, is manifest in the fact that no matter how
decently dressed or well-behaved a colored man may be, he is denied
civil treatment in the ways thus pointed out, unless he comes as a
servant. His color, not his character, determines the place he shall
hold and the kind of treatment he shall receive. That this is due to a
prejudice and has no rational principle under it is seen in the fact
that the presence of colored persons in hotels and rail cars is only
offensive when they are there as guests and passengers. As servants they
are welcome, but as equal citizens they are not. It is also seen in the
further fact that nowhere else on the globe, except in the United
States, are colored people subject to insult and outrage on account of
color. The colored traveler in Europe does not meet it, and we denounce
it here as a disgrace to American civilization and American religion and
as a violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the
United States. From those courts which have solemnly sworn to support
the Constitution and that yet treat this provision of it with contempt
we appeal to the people, and call upon our friends to remember our civil
rights at the ballot-box. On the point of the two equalities we are
determined to be understood.
We leave social equality where it should be left, with each individual
man and woman. No law can regulate or control it. It is a matter with
which governments have nothing whatever to do. Each may choose his own
friends and associates without interference or dictation of any.