He loves the white men who were boys with him, whose faces
he has smiled in from infancy, and he would rather not sever those
friendly ties. A touching incident is related in reference to a
colored man in a certain town where a mob was murdering Negroes right
and left, who came to the door of his place of business, and seeing
the face of a young white man whom he had known from his youth, asked
protection home to his wife and five children; the reply came with an
oath, "Get back into that house or I will put a bullet into you." The
day before this these two men had been "good friends," had "exchanged
cigars"-but the orders of the mob were stronger in this instance than
the ties of long years of close friendship. Another instance, though,
will show how the mob could not control the ties of friendship of
the white for the black. It was the case of a colored man who was
blacklisted by a mob in a certain city, and fled to the home of a
neighboring white friend who kept him in his own house for several
days until escape was possible, and in the meantime, summoned his
white neighbors to guard the black man's family-threatening to shoot
down the first member of the mob who should enter the gate, because,
as he said, "you have no right to frighten that woman and her children
to death." Such acts as this assures to the Negroes in places where
feeling runs against them that perhaps they may be fortunate enough to
escape the violence of this terrible race hatred that is now running
riot in this country.
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