For the more recent history of peonage see pp. 306, 329, 344, 360-363.]

3. Social Life:  Proscription, Lynching

Meanwhile proscription went forward.  Separate and inferior traveling accommodations, meager provision for the education of Negro children, inadequate street, lighting and water facilities in most cities and towns, and the general lack of protection of life and property, made living increasingly harder for a struggling people.  For the Negro of aspiration or culture every day became a long train of indignities and insults.  On street cars he was crowded into a few seats, generally in the rear; he entered a railway station by a side door; in a theater he might occupy only a side, or more commonly the extreme rear, of the second balcony; a house of ill fame might flourish next to his own little home; and from public libraries he was shut out altogether, except where a little branch was sometimes provided.  Every opportunity for such self-improvement as a city might be expected to afford him was either denied him, or given on such terms as his self-respect forced him to refuse.

Meanwhile—­and worst of all—­he failed to get justice in the courts.  Formally called before the bar he knew beforehand that the case was probably already decided against him.  A white boy might insult and pick a quarrel with his son, but if the case reached the court room the white boy would be freed and the Negro boy fined $25 or sent to jail for three months.  Some trivial incident involving no moral responsibility whatever on the Negro’s part might yet cost him his life.

Lynching grew apace.  Generally this was said to be for the protection of white womanhood; but statistics certainly did not give rape the prominence that it held in the popular mind.  Any cause of controversy, however slight, that forced a Negro to defend himself against a white man might result in a lynching, and possibly in a burning.  In the period of 1871-73 the number of Negroes lynched in the South is said to have been not more than 11 a year.  Between 1885 and 1915, however, the number of persons lynched in the country amounted to 3500, the great majority being Negroes in the South.  For the year 1892 alone the figure was 235.

One fact was outstanding:  astonishing progress was being made by the Negro people, but in the face of increasing education and culture on their part, there was no diminution of race feeling.  Most Southerners preferred still to deal with a Negro of the old type rather than with one who was neatly dressed, simple and unaffected in manner, and ambitious to have a good home.  In any case, however, it was clear that since the white man held the power, upon him rested primarily the responsibility of any adjustment.  Old schemes for deportation or colonization in a separate state having proved ineffective or chimerical, it was necessary to find a new platform on which both races could stand.  The Negro was still the outstanding