Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1901 — Never Killed a President. [ARTICLE]

Never Killed a President.

“I overheard some remarks at the capltol the day President McKinley’s body lay in state there that I have not forgotten,” said an official of the treasury, according to the Washington Star. “The push was something terrific, as everybody will remember, and white women and colored women, white men 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 some 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 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 woman made no further remarks.”