or intimidate them so that they do not vote.  But the better class of people must not be blamed for this, and a more thoroughly American population than the Christian people of the South does not exist.  They have the traditions, the kindness, the probity, the courage of our forefathers.  The problem on their hands is immeasurable.  The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt.  The grog-shop is its center of power.  ’The safety of woman, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so that the men dare not go beyond the sight of their own roof-tree.’  How little we know of all this, seated in comfort and affluence here at the North, descanting upon the rights of every man to cast one vote and have it fairly counted; that well-worn shibboleth invoked once more to dodge a living issue.

“The fact is that illiterate colored men will not vote at the South until the white population chooses to have them do so; and under similar conditions they would not at the North.”  Here we have Miss Willard’s words in full, condoning fraud, violence, murder, at the ballot box; rapine, shooting, hanging and burning; for all these things are done and being done now by the Southern white people.  She does not stop there, but goes a step further to aid them in blackening the good name of an entire race, as shown by the sentences quoted in the paragraph above.  These utterances, for which the colored people have never forgiven Miss Willard, and which Frederick Douglass has denounced as false, are to be found in full in the Voice of October 23,1890, a temperance organ published at New York City.

This letter appeared in the May number of Fraternity, the organ of the first Anti-Lynching society of Great Britain.  When Lady Henry Somerset learned through Miss Florence Balgarnie that this letter had been published she informed me that if the interview was published she would take steps to let the public know that my statements must be received with caution.  As I had no money to pay the printer to suppress the edition which was already published and these ladies did not care to do so, the May number of Fraternity was sent to its subscribers as usual.  Three days later there appeared in the daily Westminster Gazette an “interview” with Miss Willard, written by Lady Henry Somerset, which was so subtly unjust in its wording that I was forced to reply in my own defense.  In that reply I made only statements which, like those concerning Miss Willard’s Voice interview, have not been and cannot be denied.  It was as follows: 

  LADY HENRY SOMERSET’S INTERVIEW WITH MISS WILLARD