[Up From Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington]@TWC D-Link book
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

CHAPTER VI
11/18

At one time Mr.Douglass was travelling in the state of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his passage that the other passengers had paid.

When some of the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr.Douglass, and one of them said to him: "I am sorry, Mr.Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner," Mr.Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: "They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me." In one part of the country, where the law demands the separation of the races on the railroad trains, I saw at one time a rather amusing instance which showed how difficult it sometimes is to know where the black begins and the white ends.
There was a man who was well known in his community as a Negro, but who was so white that even an expert would have hard work to classify him as a black man.

This man was riding in the part of the train set aside for the coloured passengers.


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