The Daily Phoenix

The True Relations Between the Races,

Hon. A. G. Brown, formerly United States Senator from Mississippi, recently made a speech before a large mass meeting of whites and blacks. The main features of his address are pretty much the same as those of Gov. Orr and others who have addressed similar meetings within the past few months. Of the relations that should exist between the two races, Gov. Brown said:

"Men make men equal before the law--that is, they confer on them equal civil and political rights but they cannot make them of equal stature, of equal wisdom, or of the same color." No more can they make them socially equal. Social equality depends on agreement. The laws cannot enforce it. I am no man's equal, socially, unless he agrees to the equality. No man has a right to demand against my consent; and this rule is universal and all-pervading among men. Your race is no exception to the rule. The honest, industrious and frugal among you do not admit to social equality the dishonest, idle and wasteful of your own color, nor do white people. Social equality is simply a matter of private agreement, and is not to be controlled by any public law. Whenever the black people desire social equality, and the white people agree to yield it, we shall have it, and not before. It takes two to make a bargain, and I risk nothing in saying that neither whites nor blacks in this South want to make this bargain now. I have but one idea to add. It is this: There will be social equality in the South between the races quite as soon as the same thing occurs at the North; for I happen to know that the Southern people have a much higher appreciation of the black man's honor and character than the Northern people have."