Nowhere in the South to-day is the Negro cut off LEGALLY, as a
Negro, from the ballot. Legally, to-day, any Negro who can meet the
comparatively slight requirements as to education, or property, or both,
can cast his ballot on a basis of equality with the white man. I have
emphasized the word legally, for I know the PRACTICAL difficulties which
confront the Negro votes in many parts of the South. The point I wish to
make is that legally the Negro is essentially the political equal of
the white man; but that practically, in the enforcement of the law, the
legislative ideal is still pegged out far beyond the actual performance.
Now, then, if we are interested in the problem of democracy, we have two
courses open to us. We may think the laws are unjust to the Negro,
and incidentally to the 'poor white' man as well. If we do, we have a
perfect right to agitate for changes; and we can do much to disclose,
without heat, the actual facts regarding the complicated and vexatious
legislative situation in the South, as regards the suffrage. Every
change in the legislation upon this subject should, indeed, be jealously
watched, that the principle of political equality between the races be
not legally curtailed. The doctrine laid down in the Fifteenth Amendment
must, at any hazard, be maintained.
But, personally,--and I am here voicing a profound conviction,--I think
our emphasis at present should be laid upon the practical rather than
upon the legal aspect of the problem; I think we should take advantage
of the widely prevalent feeling in the South that the question of
suffrage has been settled, legally, for some time to come: of the desire
on the part of many Southern people, both white and colored, to turn
aside from the discussion of the political status of the Negro.
In short, let us for the time being accept the laws as they are, and
build upward from that point. Let us turn our attention to the practical
task of finding out why it is that the laws we already have are not
enforced, and how best to secure an honest vote for every Negro
and equally for every 'poor white' man, who is able to meet the
requirements, but who for one reason or another does not or cannot now
exercise his rights. I include the disfranchised white man as well as
the Negro, because I take it that we are interested, first of all, in
democracy, and unless we can arouse the spirit of democracy, South and
North, we can hope for justice neither for Negroes, nor for the poorer
class of white men, nor for the women of the factories and shops, nor
for the children of the cottonmills.
Taking up this side of the problem we shall discover two entirely
distinct difficulties:--
First, we shall find many Negroes, and indeed hundreds of thousands
of white men as well, who might vote, but who, through ignorance, or
inability or unwillingness to pay the poll-taxes, or from mere lack of
interest, disfranchise themselves.
The second difficulty is peculiar to the Negro. It consists in open
or concealed intimidation on the part of the white men who control the
election machinery. In many places in the South to-day no Negro, how
well qualified, would dare to present himself for registration; when he
does, he is rejected for some trivial or illegal reason.
Thus we have to meet a vast amount of apathy and ignorance and poverty
on the one hand, and the threat of intimidation on the other.
First of all, for it is the chief injustice as between white and colored
men with which we have to deal,--an injustice which the law already
makes illegal and punishable,--how shall we meet the matter of
intimidation? As I have already said, the door of the suffrage is
everywhere legally open to the Negro, but a certain sort of Southerner
bars the passage-way. He stands there and, law or no law, keeps out many
Negroes who might vote; and he represents in most parts of the South the
prevailing public opinion.
Shall we meet this situation by force? What force is available? Shall
the North go down and fight the South? You and I know that the North
to-day has no feeling but friendship for the South. More than that--and
I say it with all seriousness, because it represents what I have heard
wherever I have gone in the North to make inquiries regarding the
Negro problem--the North, wrongly or rightly, is to-day more than half
convinced that the South is right in imposing some measure of limitation
upon the franchise. There is now, in short, no disposition anywhere in
the North to interfere in internal affairs in the South--not even with
the force of public opinion.
What other force, then, is to be invoked? Shall the Negro revolt? Shall
he migrate? Shall he prosecute his case in the courts? The very asking
of these questions suggests the inevitable reply.
We might as well, here and now, dismiss the idea of force, express or
implied. There are times of last resort which call for force; but this
is not such a time.
What other alternatives are there?
Accepting the laws as they are, then, there are two methods of
procedure, neither sensational nor exciting. I have no quick cure to
suggest, but only old and tried methods of commonplace growth.
The underlying causes of the trouble in the country being plainly
ignorance and prejudice, we must meet ignorance and prejudice with their
antidotes, education and association.
Every effort should be made to extend free education among both Negroes
and white people. A great extension of education is now going forward in
the South. The Negro is not by any means getting his full share; but,
as certainly as sunshine makes things grow, education in the South will
produce tolerance. That there is already such a growing tolerance no one
who has talked with the leading white men in the South can doubt. The
old fire-eating, Negro-baiting leaders of the Tillman-Vardaman type
are swiftly passing away: a far better and broader group is coming into
power.
In his last book, Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Alabama, expresses this
new point of view when he says,--
'There is no question here as to the unrestricted admission [to the
ballot] of the great masses of our ignorant and semi-ignorant blacks.
I know no advocate of such admission. But the question is as to whether
the individuals of the race, upon conditions or restrictions legally
imposed and fairly administered, shall be admitted to adequate and
increasing representation in the electorate. And as that question
is more seriously and more generally considered, many of the leading
publicists of the South, I am glad to say, are quietly resolved that the
answer shall be in the affirmative.'
From an able Southern white man, a resident of New Orleans, I received
recently a letter containing these words:--
'I believe we have reached the bottom, and a sort of quiescent period.
I think it most likely that from now on there will be a gradual increase
of the Negro vote. And I honestly believe that the less said about it,
the surer the increase will be.'
Education--and by education I mean education of all sorts, industrial,
professional, classical, in accordance with each man's talents--will
not only produce breadth and tolerance, but will help to cure the apathy
which now keeps so many thousands of both white men and Negroes from
the polls: for it will show them that it is necessary for every man
to exercise all the political rights within his reach. If he fails
voluntarily to take advantage of the rights he already has, how shall he
acquire more rights?
And as ignorance must be met by education, so prejudice must be met with
its antidote, which is association. Democracy does not consist in mere
voting, but in association, the spirit of common effort, of which the
ballot is a mere visible expression. When we come to know one another
we soon find that the points of likeness are much more numerous than the
points of difference. And this human association for the common good,
which is democracy, is difficult to bring about anywhere, whether among
different classes of white people, or between white people and Negroes.
As one of the leaders of the Negro race, Dr. Du Bois, has said,--
'Herein lies the tragedy of the age. Not that men are poor: all men know
something of poverty. Not that men are wicked: who is good? Not that men
are ignorant: what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of each
other.'
After the Atlanta riot I attended a number of conferences between
leading white men and leading colored men. It is true those meetings
bore evidence of awkwardness and embarrassment, for they were among the
first of the sort to take place in the South, but they were none the
less valuable. A white man told me after one of the meetings,--
'I did not know that there were any such sensible Negroes in the South.'
And a Negro told me that it was the first time in his life that he had
ever heard a Southern white man reason in a friendly way with a Negro
concerning their common difficulties.
More and more these associations of white and colored men, at certain
points of contact, must and will come about. Already, in connection
with various educational and business projects in the South, white and
colored men meet on common grounds, and the way has been opened to a
wider mutual understanding. And it is common enough now, where it was
unheard of a few years ago, for both white men and Negroes to speak
from the same platform in the South. I have attended a number of
such meetings. Thus slowly--awkwardly, at first, for two centuries of
prejudice are not immediately overcome--the white man and Negro will
come to know one another, not merely as master and servant, but as
co-workers. These things cannot be forced.
One reason why the white man and the Negro have not got together more
rapidly in the South than they have, is because they have tried always
to meet at the sorest points. When sensible people, who must live
together whether or no, find that there are points at which they cannot
agree, it is the part of wisdom to avoid these points, and to meet upon
other and common interests. Upon no other terms, indeed, can a democracy
exist, for in no imaginable future state will individuals cease to
disagree with one another upon something less than half of all the
problems of life.
'Here we all live together in a great country,' say the apostles of this
view; 'let us all get together and develop it. Let the Negro do his best
to educate himself, to own his own land, and to buy and sell with the
white people in the fairest possible way.'
It is wonderful, indeed, how close together men who are stooping to a
common task soon come.
Now, buying and selling, land ownership and common material pursuits,
may not be the highest points of contact between man and man, but they
are real points, and help to give men an idea of the worth of their
fellows, white or black. How many times, in the South, I heard white men
speak in high admiration of some Negro farmer who had been successful,
or of some Negro blacksmith who was a worthy citizen, or of some Negro
doctor who was a leader of his race.
It is curious, once a man (any man, white or black) learns to do his job
well, how he finds himself in a democratic relationship with other men.
I remember asking a prominent white citizen of a town in Central Georgia
if he knew anything about Tuskegee. He said,--
'Yes: I had rather a curious experience last fall. I was building a
hotel and couldn't get any one to do the plastering as I wanted it done.
One day I saw two Negro plasterers at work in a new house that a friend
of mine was building. I watched them for an hour. They seemed to know
their trade. I invited them to come over and see me. They came, took the
contract for my work, hired a white man to carry mortar at a dollar
a day, and when they got through it was the best job of plastering
in town. I found that they had learned their trade at Tuskegee. They
averaged four dollars a day each in wages. We tried to get them to
locate in our town, but they went back to school.'
When I was in Mississippi a prominent banker showed me his business
letter-heads.
'Good job, isn't it?' he said. 'A Negro printer did it. He wrote to me
asking if he might bid on my work. I replied that although I had known
him a long time I couldn't give him the job merely because he was a
Negro. He told me to forget his color, and said that if he couldn't do
as good a job and do it as reasonably as any white man could, he didn't
want it. I let him try, and now he does most of our printing.'
Out of such points of contact, then, encouraged by such wise leaders
as Booker T. Washington, will grow an ever finer and finer spirit
of association and of common and friendly knowledge. And that will
inevitably lead to an extension upon the soundest possible basis of the
Negro franchise. I know cases where white men have urged intelligent
Negroes to come and cast their ballots, and have stood sponsor for them,
out of genuine respect. As a result, to-day, the Negroes who vote in the
South are, as a class, men of substance and intelligence, fully equal to
the tasks of citizenship.
Thus, I have boundless confidence not only in the sense of the white men
of the South, but in the innate capability of the Negro, and that once
these two come really to know each other, not at sore points of contact,
but as common workers for a common country, the question of suffrage
will gradually solve itself along the lines of true democracy.
Another influence also will tend to change the status of the Negro as a
voter. That is the pending break-up of the political solidarity of the
South. All the signs point to a political realignment upon new issues in
this country, both South and North. Old party names may even pass away.
And that break-up, with the attendant struggle for votes, is certain
to bring into politics thousands of Negroes and white men now
disfranchised. The result of a real division on live issues has been
shown in many local contests in the South, as in the fight against the
saloons, when every qualified Negro voter, and every Negro who could
qualify, was eagerly pushed forward by one side or the other. With such
a division on new issues the Negro will tend to exercise more and more
political power, dividing, not on the color line, but on the principles
at stake.
Thus in spite of the difficulties which now confront the Negro, I cannot
but look upon the situation in a spirit of optimism. I think sometimes
we are tempted to set a higher value upon the ritual of a belief than
upon the spirit which underlies it. The ballot is not democracy: it
is merely the symbol or ritual of democracy, and it may be full of
passionate social, yes, even religious significance, or it may be a mere
empty and dangerous formalism. What we should look to, then, primarily,
is not the shadow, but the substance of democracy in this country. Nor
must we look for results too swiftly; our progress toward democracy is
slow of growth and needs to be cultivated with patience and watered with
faith.