In this paper I endeavor to lay down the fundamental principles which
should govern the Negro franchise in a democracy, and to outline a
practical programme for the immediate treatment of the problem.
As I see it, the question of Negro suffrage in the United States
presents two distinct aspects:--
FIRST: the legal aspect.
SECOND: the practical aspect.
It will be admitted, I think, without argument, that all governments do
and of a necessity must exercise the right to limit the number of people
who are permitted to take part in the weighty responsibilities of the
suffrage. Some governments allow only a few men to vote; in an absolute
monarchy there is only one voter; other governments, as they become more
democratic, permit a larger proportion of the people to vote.
Our own government is one of the freest in the world in the matter of
suffrage; and yet we bar out, in most states, all women; we bar out
Mongolians, no matter how intelligent; we bar out Indians, and all
foreigners who have not passed through a certain probationary stage
and have not acquired a certain small amount of education. We also
declare--for an arbitrary limit must be placed somewhere--that no person
under twenty-one years of age may exercise the right to vote, although
some boys of eighteen are to-day better equipped to pass intelligently
upon public questions than many grown men. We even place adult white men
on probation until they have resided for a certain length of time, often
as much as two years, in the state or the town where they wish to cast
their ballots. Our registration and ballot laws eliminate hundreds of
thousands of voters; and finally, we bar out everywhere the defective
and criminal classes of our population. We do not realize, sometimes, I
think, how limited the franchise really is, even in America. We forget
that out of nearly ninety million people in the United States, fewer
than fifteen million cast their votes for President in 1908--or about
one in every six.
Thus the practice of a restricted suffrage is very deeply implanted in
our system of government. It is everywhere recognized that even in
a democracy lines must be drawn, and that the ballot, the precious
instrument of government, must be hedged about with stringent
regulations. The question is, where shall these lines be drawn in order
that the best interests, not of any particular class, but of the whole
nation, shall be served.
Upon this question, we, as free citizens, have the absolute right to
agree or disagree with the present laws regulating suffrage; and if we
want more people brought in as partakers in government, or some people
who are already in, barred out, we have a right to organize, to agitate,
to do our best to change the laws. Powerful organizations of women are
now agitating for the right to vote; there is an organization which
demands the suffrage for Chinese and Japanese who wish to become
citizens. It is even conceivable that a society might be founded to
lower the suffrage age-limit from twenty-one to nineteen years, thereby
endowing a large number of young men with the privileges, and therefore
the educational responsibilities, of political power. On the other hand,
a large number of people, chiefly in our Southern States, earnestly
believe that the right of the Negro to vote should be curtailed, or even
abolished.
Thus we disagree, and government is the resultant of all these diverse
views and forces. No one can say dogmatically how far democracy should
go in distributing the enormously important powers of active government.
Democracy is not a dogma; it is not even a dogma of free suffrage.
Democracy is a life, a spirit, a growth. The primal necessity of any
sort of government, democracy or otherwise, whether it be more unjust or
less unjust toward special groups of its citizens, is to exist, to be
a going concern, to maintain upon the whole a stable and peaceful
administration of affairs. If a democracy cannot provide such stability,
then the people go back to some form of oligarchy. Having secured a
fair measure of stability, a democracy proceeds with caution toward the
extension of the suffrage to more and more people--trying foreigners,
trying women, trying Negroes.
And no one can prophesy how far a democracy will ultimately go in the
matter of suffrage. We know only the tendency. We know that in the
beginning, even in America, the right to vote was a very limited matter.
In the early years, in New England, only church-members voted; then the
franchise was extended to include property-owners; then it was enlarged
to include all white adults; then to include Negroes; then, in several
Western States, to include women.
Thus the line has been constantly advancing, but with many fluctuations,
eddies, and back-currents--like any other stream of progress. At
the present time the fundamental principles which underlie popular
government, and especially the whole matter of popular suffrage, are
much in the public mind. The tendency of government throughout the
entire civilized world is strongly in the direction of placing more
and more power in the hands of the people. In our own country we are
enacting a remarkable group of laws providing for direct primaries in
the nomination of public officials, for direct election of United States
Senators, and for direct legislation by means of the initiative and
referendum; and we are even going to the point, in many cities,
of permitting the people to recall an elected official who is
unsatisfactory. The principle of local option, which is nothing but that
of direct government by the people, is being everywhere accepted. All
these changes affect, fundamentally, the historic structure of our
government, making it less republican and more democratic.
Still more important and far-reaching in its significance is the
tendency of our government, especially our Federal Government, to
regulate or to appropriate great groups of business enterprises formerly
left wholly in private hands. More and more, private business is
becoming public business.
Now, then, as the weight of responsibility upon the popular vote is
increased, it becomes more and more important that the ballot should
be jealously guarded and honestly exercised. In the last few years,
therefore, a series of extraordinary new precautions have been adopted:
the Australian ballot, more stringent registration systems, the stricter
enforcement of naturalization laws to prevent the voting of crowds of
unprepared foreigners, and the imposition by several states, rightly or
wrongly, of educational and property tests. It becomes a more and more
serious matter every year to be an American citizen, more of an honor,
more of a duty.
At the close of the Civil War, in a time of intense idealistic emotion,
some three-quarters of a million of Negroes, the mass of them densely
ignorant and just out of slavery, with the iron of slavery still in
their souls, were suddenly given the political rights of free citizens.
A great many people, and not in the South alone, thought then, and still
think, that it was a mistake to bestow the high powers and privileges
of a wholly unrestricted ballot--a ballot which is the symbol of
intelligent self-government--upon the Negro. Other people, of whom I am
one, believe that it was a necessary concomitant of the revolution; it
was itself a revolution, not a growth, and like every other revolution
it has had its fearful reaction. Revolutions, indeed, change names, but
they do not at once change human relationships. Mankind is reconstructed
not by proclamations, or legislation, or military occupation, but by
time, growth, education, religion, thought. At that time, then, the
nation drove down the stakes of its idealism in government far beyond
the point it was able to reach in the humdrum activities of everyday
existence. A reaction was inevitable; it was inevitable and perfectly
natural that there should be a widespread questioning as to whether
all Negroes, or indeed any Negroes, should properly be admitted to full
political fellowship. That questioning continues to this day.
Now, the essential principle established by the Fifteenth Amendment to
the Constitution was not that all Negroes should necessarily be given an
unrestricted access to the ballot; but that the right to vote should not
be denied or abridged 'on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude.' This amendment wiped out the color-line in politics so
far as any written law could possibly do it.
Let me here express my profound conviction that the principle of
political equality then laid down is a sound, valid, and absolutely
essential principle in any free government; that restrictions upon the
ballot, when necessary, should be made to apply equally to white and
colored citizens; and that the Fifteenth Amendment ought not to be,
and cannot be repealed. Moreover, I am convinced that the principle of
political equality is more firmly established to-day in this country
than it was forty years ago, when it had only Northern bayonets behind
it. For now, however short the practice falls of reaching the legal
standard, the principle is woven into the warp and woof of Southern life
and Southern legislation. Many Southern white leaders of thought are
to-day CONVINCED, not FORCED believers in the principle; and that is a
great omen.
Limitations have come about, it is true, and were to be expected as
the back-currents of the revolution. Laws providing for educational
and property qualifications as a prerequisite to the exercise of the
suffrage have been passed in all the Southern States, and have operated
to exclude from the ballot large numbers of both white and colored
citizens, who on account of ignorance or poverty are unable to meet
the tests. These provisions, whatever the opinion entertained as to
the wisdom of such laws, are well within the principle laid down by
the Fifteenth Amendment. But several Southern States have gone a step
further, and by means of the so-called 'grandfather laws,' have exempted
certain ignorant white men from the necessity of meeting the educational
and property tests. These unfair 'grandfather laws,' however, in some of
the states adopting them, have now expired by limitation.