The Color Line.

Race relations in the United States reached a new low in the first decade of the new century. By 1900 Native Americans had been reduced to dependency, stripped of much of the land granted to them by treaty and left to defend themselves against further encroachment by mining companies and land speculators. On the West Coast Asian Americans continued to encounter resentment and misunderstanding. Relations between whites and blacks were marked by two unavoidable phenomena: violence and segregation. The decade began with a race riot in New York City and saw subsequent riots in Atlanta in 1906 and in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908. In the latter incident two blacks were lynched, four whites were killed, seventy people were injured, and a force of five thousand militiamen was required to restore order in the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. A regiment of black soldiers was summarily...