The Marshall Hotel was one of the few decent establishments in the city that welcomed or tolerated a mixed crowd. Du Bois was not able to convince the committee that the Marshall Hotel was not a haunt for the degenerate. Interracial intimacy and friendship across the color line, not prostitution, were the issues with which the committee was most concerned. As the executive secretary, Frederick Whitten, explained in his reply: The Marshall Hotel encouraged “the unfortunate mixing of the races which when individuals are of the ordinary class, always means danger.”
