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Chapter XIV Other Involvements To be president ofacollege and white isno bed or roses. To be president of a college and black is almost a bed of thorns. The ever-present necessity of raising funds is particularly difficult for the Negro college, since money owned and controlled by whites flows more freely and more abundantly from white to white than it does from white to black. Moreover, the Negro president ofa Negro college isalmost dailyconfronted by stumbling blocks, hurdles, and personal embarrassments that rarely if ever clutter the path of his white counterpart. The proud and sensitive Negro, if he is to be free in his own mind and soul, must forever be on guard against accepting conditions that will enslave his spirit. On countless Tuesday mornings in chapel I pointed out to the Morehouse students that the only way they could be free in a rigidly segregated society wasby consistent refusal ever to accept subservience and segregation in their own minds. As long as a man registers some form of protest against that which is obviously wrong, he has not surrendered his freedom, and his soul is still his own. The struggle to maintain one's integrity is always difficult, but for a black man in a white-dominated world it is a continuous "trial by fire/' How should the president of a black college behave when his sense of right and righteousness is assaulted by the interracial wrongs in the society in which he lives?There isno once-for-all, no final answer. This question must be answered over and over again in a world where the problem of race is omnipresent, as close to a black man as the beating of his heart. Nineteen years after I was almost mobbed on a Pullman car in Tennessee I was again almost mobbed on a dining car in my native South Carolina on the Southern Railroad between Atlanta and Greenville. This happened in 1944, f°ur Years after I had assumed the presidency of Morehouse. I have lived long enough to experience five stages in the changing treatment of Negro passengers in Pullman cars: 196 O T H E R I N V O L V E M E N T S 197 The first stage wasone offlatrefusal, with an angry ticket seller snarling that there was space available but not for "niggers." The second stage represented verbal improvement, with the ticket agent assuring the black passenger that there was no space available. The third stage presented a rare spectacle—the black man being given separate but better! The Pullmancompany would sell me and other Negroes a drawing room for the price of a lower berth. In the fourth stage, Negroes could buy berths, but only at the ends of the coaches, never in the middle. The fifth and present stage is one in which segregation has been eliminated from Pullman travel. The changes have been slow and grudging, not given but forced. In the history of a century of segregation, the drawing-room experience is unique because it appears to be the only instance where white people would give the Negro the best for less money in order to preserve the segregated system by hiding the black man from view. The evolutionof dining-car service for Negroes followed a similar route. In the southern part of the United States, the black man was excluded from the diner and no other provision was made for him. There was an "upstairs waiter" who came through with his cart selling drinks and sandwiches. In the half coach occupied by Negroes there was the "butcher," confiscating four seats and selling drinks, candy, and sandwiches. Of course, the white passengers in the white coaches would be served by the cart before it reached the colored passengers. Negroes usually carried their lunches with them. The second stage was the provision by which Negroes wishing to eat in the diner had to get up early enough in the morning so that they could be served and out before the white passengers appeared. Or they could come to the diner between nine and ten, provided every white passenger had left. They were also permitted to the diner late at night after the white folks had finished. The "curtain** represented the third stage. One table (occasionally two), at the end next to the kitchen was set aside for Negroes. This table was partitioned off by a heavy, thick blue curtain so that white passengers need not be...

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