Things Heard and Seen [excerpt]

     “I overheard some remarks at the Capitol the day President McKinley’s body lay in state there that I have not forgotten,” said an official of the treasury. “The push was something terrific, as everybody will remember, and white women and colored women, white men and black men, were jostled closer together than they had ever been before. I heard a nicely dressed white woman, who was just back of me, say to a friend: ‘Why do they let these negroes come to an affair of this kind? They are so disagreeable to have near one. I wish they were away.’ The remarks referred to come [sic] colored women who were close in line behind the white women. The woman’s remarks were overheard, and it was very interesting to listen to the reply of one of the colored women. ‘Yes, we are negroes,’ she said to the white woman, or rather in her direction, as the white woman had not intended for her remarks to reach the colored people, ‘and we are not sorry for it, especially on such a sad occasion as this. It was not a negro who killed Lincoln, or fired the bullet that laid Garfield low or put out the life of McKinley. It was a white man and there is no reproach on the negro race, at least in this direction.’ It is needless to say that the white women made no further remarks.”