Vicksburg Herald clipping

Social Equality Radicals.

Our special correspondent at Holly Springs, informed the readers of the HERALD yesterday morning, of the disgraceful conduct of Dr. Compton, H. R. Pease, Wm. H. Gibbs and W. B. Avery, at the eating house at the sixty-two mile siding on the New Orleans, St. Louis and Chicago railroad, Monday morning. Compton is Superintendent of the State Insane Asylum at Jackson. Pease is, by the grace of a gang of ignorant negroes, United States Senator until next March. Gibbs is State Auditor, and Avery is a member of the Legislature from Yalabusha county. These men are all white, and yet they voluntarily degraded themselves to the level of the negroes, and forced themselves, and their negro associates into seats at the ladies' table. The negroes present on the occasion were Shadd, the mulatto Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, Lynch, the mulatto Representative in Congress from the Natchez District, and Sam Ireland, another mulatto, who holds some position in and about Alcorn University. Pease, Gibbs, and Avery, had no character to lose by their disgraceful action, and nothing better was expected from them. Dr. Compton was once regarded as a gentleman, but as he has fallen to the degraded level of negro social equality, we fancy that those who once recognized him in that character will allow him to associate, in future, with negroes exclusively - for assuredly the man who voluntarily assumes the position occupied by Compton, cannot be recognized by any gentleman who wishes to avoid degradation and dishonor.