Did Not Sit With White Woman nor Pose as Frenchman.

The black community in Boston feels “special resentment” when Rev. Reverdy C. Ransom is mobbed by white passengers on a train and then refused help.

Did Not Sit With White Woman nor Pose as Frenchman.
Boston, Mass., June 2, 1906. The colored people of Boston of every faction are deeply stirred up over the indignities to which their fellow townsman, Rev. Reverdy C. Ransom, pastor of the Charles St. A.M.E. Church, was subjected by white passengers in Tennessee who mobbed him and drove him brutally from his seat in a Pullman car and by the colored principal of the Industrial School at Normal, Ala., who because of the assault upon him by these Tennessee ruffians not only forbade him delivering the Commencement address he had been invited to deliver by this same principal, but turned him away from the grounds without even offering him shelter, rest or food.
Especial resentment is felt here by the colored people over the false reposts sent out by the Southern branch of the Associated Press and pal of the school at Normal, Ala. Rev. Ransom, coming straight back from Alabama, arrived in Boston Wednesday night completely exhausted from his long fast and suffering from injuries received on the train going down. It has been found out that Rev. Ransom at no time was in the dining car, that he did not speak a word of German or French to anyone, that he was conversing with no one when attacked. An hour before a lady had asked him from a seat across the aisle if he were a Frenchman, pointing to the foreign tags on his suitcase and he had replied in English indicating he knew about a foot of French Not two dozen words has passed between them…

“Did Not Sit With White Woman nor Pose as Frenchman.,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed January 20, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/436.