But were he to seduce a colored man's daughter or wife the case would be wholly different.
Archibald Henry Grimké
The Public Record
Archibald Henry Grimké was an African-American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated from freedmen's schools, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School, and served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898. He was an activist for the rights of Black Americans, working in Boston and Washington, D.C. He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D.C. chapter.
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No bastardy process lies in favor of the colored girl as lies in favor of her white sister under like circumstances, and no maintenance could she possibly obtain for her child from the white man who wronged her.
Intermarriage between the races has been made illegal by every Southern state and by some Northern states also.
Such a law makes colored women the safe quarry of white men, and nowhere in the South do law or public opinion impose upon them any deterrent punishment, moral or legal, for their crime, but quite the opposite.
For such men do not lose standing in Southern society or the church or the state in consequence of their sin.
In all this sexual inequality and iniquity the South has eyes but sees not and ears but hears not what is taking place everywhere in its midst.
On the other hand what happens to the black man who ventures to look upon a white woman with love or carnal desire, or who is even suspected of doing so?
Ask Judge Lynch, ask the blind and murderous sex fury of white men, the red male rage of Southern mobs.
Nevertheless black men cannot be made to see the difference between the lust of black men and the lust of white men, or to acknowledge the justice of such a distinction.
Hold the blacks responsible by all means for the crimes they commit, but hold the whites responsible also for creating social and legal conditions which lead directly to the growth of crime among both races.
Race and color not efficiency and character are the basis of the Southern caste system, and such a system produces unavoidably ill-will, oppressions, and resentments between the races which lead directly or indirectly to the commission of…
I was too proud to beg, and ashamed to borrow.