That this is due to a prejudice and has no rational principle under it is seen in the fact that the presence of colored persons in hotels and rail cars is only offensive when they are there as guests and passengers.
Douglass points out the irrationality of racial prejudice, noting that it is only in the U.S. that such discrimination is prevalent in public spaces.
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More from Frederick Douglass
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.