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OCCASIONAL PAPERS No. 6.
The American Negro Academy.
Rev. ALEXANDER CRUMMELL, Founder.
The Disfranchisement
of the Negro.
By JOHN L. LOVE.
Price 15 cents.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
Published by the Academy,
1899.
The Disfranchisement of the Negro.
"A Constitution formed so as to enable a party to overrule its very
government, and to overpower the people too, answers the purpose
neither of government nor of freedom"--Edmund Burke.
The assault, under the forms of law, which is being made upon the
political rights of the Negro is the symptom of an animus which has its
roots imbedded in the past. It does not mark a revival, but rather the
supreme desperate effort of the spirit of tyranny to compass the
political subjection and consequent social degradation of the black man.
Its provocation does not consist in any abnormal or perilous condition
in southern communities arising from a numerical preponderance of
Negroes. It is not made to meet a merely temporary emergency with the
intent to return to the principles of republican government upon the
advent of intelligence and wealth to the Negro. Indeed, the very intent
and purpose of the assault is to prevent such an advent, in so far as
human ingenuity and tyrannical violence can do so.
It can not find its justification in a necessity of averting by radical
measures any imagined perils to social order which might arise from the
political domination of ignorance; for the spirit which prompts the
assault has ever fostered ignorance and endeavored to perpetuate it. In
fact, the assault is so iniquitous in its conception and is being
executed with such wicked and violent disregard of political morals and
human rights, as by comparison to render almost beneficent the
realization of the perils which the imagination of the assailants
pretends to fancy.
There may be those who see in this assault nothing more than a supreme
effort of a benign civilization to save itself from utter ruin. It is,
however, to be borne in mind that the apostles of this civilization
which is of a peculiarly local type, have ever asserted that its
maintenance and future glory are inseparably connected with the
subjection of the Negro. Always they have spoken the language of
tyranny, which, in spite of its embellishments and jugglings, amounts to
this: the social well-being and political privileges of the Negro are
inconsistent with the economic interests and political ambitions of a
few southern white men. Into this language all of the feigned social
perils and political nightmares of southern planters and politicians
easily resolve themselves.
There may be those who indulge the hope that the final triumph of this
assault will have a salutary effect upon the social status of the Negro.
Their hope is due in no small measure to their ignorance of the history
of the character, spirit, and dominant purpose of the assailants. That
history furnishes the best key to an understanding of the present
assault upon the political rights of the Negro.
Forty years ago the slave power plunged this nation into war for the
avowed purpose of perpetuating Negro slavery. Alexander Stevens, on his
return from the convention which had erected the Southern Confederacy,
addressing a large assembly at Savannah, uttered the following
significant words:
"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating
questions relating to our peculiar institution--African slavery as
it exists among us--_the proper_ status of the Negro in our form of
civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and
the present revolution."
Referring to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and the leading statesmen at
the time of the formation of the Federal Constitution, that Negro
Slavery was in violation of the laws of Nature, wrong in "principle,
socially, morally and politically," he continued thus:
"Those ideas were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption
of the equality of races. Our constitution (the Confederate
Constitution,) is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas. Its
foundations are laid, its corner stone rests upon the great truth that
the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to
the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."[1]
It has become the rule to frown upon any and all references to the
circumstances and causes that produced the Civil War. This is true
especially of the men and women who upheld the cause of the Union as
against Secession. Naturally magnanimous, they have been at great pains
to avoid in their public utterances any references to the "late
unpleasantness" which might in any way wound the sensibilities of the
excessively sensitive South. Certainly, nothing can be more sincerely
desired than the utter eradication of the passions and animosities that
were evoked by armed conflict. But to ignore the fundamental cause and
motive which led the South to precipitate the war, with a view to
seeming not to be influenced by sectional prejudices is pushing
magnanimity to the verge of vapid sentimentality--a folly in which the
South, in so far as its attitude toward the Negro is concerned, has in
no sense shared.
The doctrine of "the proper status of the Negro," is as consistently
maintained by the South in eighteen hundred and ninety-nine as in
eighteen hundred and sixty, when it was made the shibboleth of the
Slavery Party and the tocsin of war; and there can be no proper
consideration of our present Negro Problem without regard to this
historical doctrine.
The Southern Confederacy is now a political myth. In its attempt to make
Negro Slavery its corner stone, it carved the gravestones of more than a
million men. Upon the proclamation of peace and universal freedom, the
nation's joy was without bounds. In the intense enthusiasm of the moment
over the "new birth of freedom," and the overthrow of the slave power,
the doctrine of the "proper status of the Negro" seemed to be eternally
repudiated and the agitations relating to it seemed indeed "forever
settled." But in the throes of its joy, there suddenly dawned upon the
nation the fact that the problems pertaining to the Negro had, because
of freedom, become more stupendous than even the question of slavery had
been. Henceforth the Negro Problem was to test severely the integrity of
republican principles.
This was the critical period of the history of the Negro in America.
Within almost the twinkling of an eye, by an exigency of one of the
world's greatest wars, his status had been suddenly changed. The slave
became a free man by the dispensation of Providence and against the will
of his master.
A free man, yet penniless and homeless. A man of toil, but one whose own
and whose ancestral toil had created a material and social grandeur
which now mocked at his poverty and arrogantly denied him a share in its
blessings. A free man, but ignorant, the greatest curse imposed by his
former status which had contributed to the enlightenment of others. A
freeman, but helpless in the face of an impending persecution. He, whose
labor had contributed to the comfort and social happiness of
others,--who, while they were testing on scores of battle fields their
power to rob him of his freedom, was caring for and protecting their
wives and daughters and furnishing the sinews of the unholy war--was now
at the mercy of those who had gone forth to battle with the cry that,
"slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal
condition."
The Thirteenth Amendment became the law of the land through the travail
of war. But the war had sapped the Nation's strength, had cost nearly a
million lives and created a debt of three billions. Weary of strife and
vexation, the nation was fain to leave the settlement of the problems,
to which the new status of the Negro had given rise, to those among whom
he was to live, i.e., to his former masters.
This was indeed a critical period in the history of the Negro race in
the United States and the lessons of this period are exceedingly
important in the light of the present attack upon the political rights
of the black man.
In recent discussions of the merits and wisdom of Negro suffrage, this
period is as a rule strangely overlooked. The assertion so commonly
made, that the conferring of the right to vote upon the Negro was a
colossal blunder, evinces the extent to which this period has been
ignored by those who make it, or else their remarkable ignorance of the
history of Negro suffrage. Political prejudices and the blind zeal and
opportunism of those who have discovered some "sure cure," for the
Negro's ills have aided much in the work of discrediting Negro suffrage.
Some have ignored the facts to such an extent as to assert that Negro
suffrage was the result of vindictiveness on the part of the
Northerners, who wished both to humiliate the South and to perpetuate
the power of the Republican Party. The trouble with this assertion is
that it imputes too much to Northern sagacity. What the nation, through
the agency of the Republican party, did was to enact the Thirteenth
Amendment and thus to make President Lincoln's conditional proclamation
of freedom an unconditioned part of the organic law. The extent of its
revenge was to insist upon the incorporation of this principle of
freedom into the old Slave Constitutions of the South. This was the
terms of surrender and having accepted this, the South was left alone
(the boon it has always craved) with full power to deal with the Negro
as tenderly as it saw fit. The Negro was left a "sojourner on
sufferance" in the great republic which he had assisted in saving, and
to the sweet charity of those who had sought to destroy it for the
purpose of binding him with unbreakable chains.
By the acceptance of the terms imposed, the rebellious states placed
themselves in a position of great responsibility and great opportunity.
The responsibility of the old South, the South of slavery and rebellion,
was to properly adjust itself to the new conditions of freedom and
inseparable union, its opportunity was to prove to the nation the claim
it so often and so boastfully makes that it is the Negro's best friend
and is disposed to treat him fairly.
Did the South rise to its opportunity? Did it treat liberally and kindly
those freedmen who as slaves had created its material wealth and many of
whom as soldiers had with the irony of fate helped to keep it from
separating from the Union of which it is now proud of being an integral
part? Did it hold out to them the promise of gradual citizenship, and,
in order that this citizenship should be intelligent, establish schools
for their education? Was it jealous or in any way solicitous about the
economic and industrial freedom of these people? In its bearing upon the
present disfranchising enactments of the South, the answer to these
questions is important.
Unaccustomed to free schools, trained to despise and punish the
intellectual aspirations of the slave, these recently rebellious states
not only refused to educate the freedmen, but actually burned many
schools that were built by men and women of the North, who in obedience
to genuine Christian charity followed in the wake of the armies of
freedom. Then as now, it proceeded to fix the Negro's status by hostile
legislation in the shape of Black codes. These laws reveal the
deliberate purpose of the South to reduce the freedmen to a state of
serfdom more bitter and degrading than slavery had been, and violated
the most sacred of the inherent rights of human nature.
The civilized state of Alabama, which is now preparing to disfranchise
the Negro, declared that "stubborn and refractory servants, and servants
who loiter away their time," were to be treated as vagrants, fined fifty
dollars and "in default of payment might be hired out at public auction
for a period of six months."[2] Thus the Thirteenth Amendment did not
destroy the auction block.
Florida declared that "it shall not be lawful for any Negro or person of
color to own, use, or keep any bowie knife, dirk, sword or fire arms or
ammunition of any kind" without license, to be granted only upon the
recommendation of two "respectable" white men. For violating this law
the Negro was to stand in the pillory for one hour and then be whipped
with thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.[3] South Carolina, always bold
to reveal its purpose, declared that "no person of color shall pursue
the practice, art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic, shopkeeper
or any other employment besides that of husbandry or that of a servant
under contract for labor"[4] without a license, which was good for one
year only; and she supplemented this with the following:
"That a person of color, who is in the employment of a master
engaged in husbandry, shall not have the license to sell any corn,
rice, peas, wheat or other grain, any flour, cotton, fodder, hay,
bacon, fresh meat of any kind or any other product of a farm,
without written permission of such master."[5]
Louisiana, which has recently outlawed the Negro by Constitutional
enactment, declared:
"Every adult freedman or woman shall furnish themselves with a
comfortable home and visible means of support _within twenty days_
after the passage of this act!"[6]
Failing to do so, such persons were to be hired out at public auction
for the rest of the year.
Let it be borne in mind that these laws were not enactments of a distant
and forgotten past. They were the deliberate enactments of that period
for the purpose of nullifying the Thirteenth Amendment.
Of this period Mr. Justice Miller in rendering the decision in the
Slaughter House Cases said:
"The process of restoring to their proper relations with the
Federal Government and with the other states those which had sided
with the rebellion, undertaken under the proclamation of President
Johnson in 1865, and before the assembling of Congress, developed
the fact that, notwithstanding the formal recognition by those
states of the abolition of slavery, the condition of the slave race
would, without further protection of the Federal Government, be
almost as bad as it was before. Among the first acts of legislation
adopted by several of the states in the legislative bodies which
claimed to be in their normal relations with the Federal
Government, were laws which imposed upon the colored race onerous
disabilities and burdens, and curtailed their rights in the pursuit
of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom
was of little value, while they had lost their protection which
they had received from their former owners from motives both of
interest and humanity."[7]
This is what happened to the Negro when the South was left alone to deal
with him and when he was voteless.
James G. Blaine truly said that:
"Without the right of citizenship his freedom could be maintained
only in name, and without the elective franchise his citizenship
would have no legitimate and no authoritative protection."
Fortunately for the Negro and for the continuance of free institutions
in the South, the nation slowly perceived this truth, but not until a
long and bitter struggle had been carried on by the friends of freedom
for manhood suffrage and human rights. These infamous, repressive and
enslaving laws finally aroused the nation's sense of justice and brought
it to the realization of the undeniable truth that in a free government
"the strong keen sword by which a freeman can protect all other rights
and give value to all other privileges is the elective franchise."
Yet in the full consciousness of this truth, attested beyond cavil by
the inhuman subjection of the Negro to the arrogant and oppressive will
of those who held peculiar notions about his "proper status," the
Federal Government hesitated to go the full length of its duty. It
stopped midway. The war seemed not to have convinced it of the futility
and fatality of compromising with the South. The Fourteenth Amendment
was adopted. The Negro was thereby given the right which his Southern
guardians proudly refused him--the right of citizenship--but not the
right which is alone the guarantee of the privileges of citizenship--the
right to a voice in the government of which he was declared a citizen.
The power of conferring suffrage limited or universal, was left as the
special privilege of the South. But the South proceeded to nullify the
Fourteenth Amendment as it had nullified the Thirteenth and sent her
captains of rebellion to make the nation's laws.
Impelled by the motive of self preservation, by the sheer necessity of
saving itself from those who would have destroyed it, and of saving to
the freedmen the simple inherent right of self-ownership, the nation was
forced to confer upon the Negro the right to vote by the adoption of the
Fifteenth Amendment. This step it is now popular to characterize as a
blunder or as an act of revenge designed to humiliate the South. If it
was, then the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery are
nameless crimes.
The period of Reconstruction has served as the text for discrediting
Negro Suffrage and is always the apt illustration that gives point to
the argument of those who attempt to prove the incapacity of the Negro
to exercise the right of suffrage. There is no doubt that the effort to
mould public sentiment away from Negro Suffrage has been generally
successful and this success has been achieved very largely through
misrepresentation in regard to the facts of Reconstruction. The great
body of active citizens have grown into full citizenship since the
Reconstruction epoch, are consequently ignorant of its true history and
quite satisfied to receive the information concerning it from those
whose interest and delight it is to resort to misrepresentation.
It is not my purpose to enter into a defense of Reconstruction, but
merely to call attention to the following facts:
(1) The attempt to reconstruct the rebellious states along lines of
Republican principles failed until the Negro was given the right to
vote. Those who had participated in the War of the Rebellion and to whom
the opportunity had been given to return to normal relations with the
Federal Government without the interference of the Negro, failed signally
and deliberately to do so in an acceptable manner. Negro Suffrage was
therefore an essential and beneficent factor in the work of
reconstruction.[8]
(2) The accepted history of that period has been written by those who
rode into power by murder and intimidation and to whose interest it is
to paint the history of reconstruction so dark as to hide their own
flagrant crimes. Their method of history writing has been that of
suppression and distortion of facts.
(3) The true history of that period reveals some things that place Negro
Suffrage in a remarkably creditable light.
The statement has recently been made that "the reconstruction regime in
the South worked lasting injury to the colored race."[9] Place this
statement in juxtaposition with a few of the things that were really
done by these newly enfranchised people who were practicing their first
lessons in the science of government.
Judge Albion W. Tourgee has stated it thus:
"They obeyed the Constitution of the United States, and annulled
the bonds of states, counties, and cities which had been issued to
carry on the war of rebellion and maintain armies in the field
against the Union. They instituted a public school system in a
realm where public schools had been unknown. They opened the ballot
box and jury box to thousands of white men who had been debarred
from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced home
rule into the South. They abolished the whipping post, the branding
iron, the stocks and other barbarous forms of punishment which had
up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about
twenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were
extravagant in the sums appropriated for public works. In all of
that time no man's rights of person were invaded under the forms of
law. Every Democrat's life, home, fireside and business were safe.
No man obstructed any white man's way to the ballot box, interfered
with his freedom of speech or boycotted him on account of his
political faith."[10]
This is the record which it is said "has worked lasting injury to the
colored race." If the true history of this period proves anything it is
this, namely, that the only republican government in fact as well as in
form that has ever existed in the South was when the Negro, though a
mere tyro in the art of government, was a controlling factor in southern
politics. His "lasting injury" consists in the fact that he planted "the
seeds of all the New South's prosperity."
The Southern politicians, who in their desperation to perpetuate Negro
Slavery created a national debt of more than three billions and stained
every vale and hillside with the blood of freemen, point with ineffable
horror at the extravagant financial legislation of the Reconstruction
period. It may be that this much paraded extravagance amounts to more
than the fiction of distorted facts; but, in view of the audacious
corruption of the era which preceded it, and the gigantic peculations of
that which has followed, the financial profligacy of Reconstruction may
not have been so bad after all.
Replying to a characteristic speech of Senator Tillman delivered in the
recent South Carolina Constitutional Convention, in which he arraigned
the financial legislation of Reconstruction in that State Mr. Thomas E.
Miller, one of the six Negro members of the convention, said:
"The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling up
of the State debt; of jobbery and peculation during the period
between 1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice
eloquent enough, nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable
gifts bestowed upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro
legislators--the laws relative to finance, the building of penal
and charitable institutions, and, greatest of all, the
establishment of the public school system. Starting as infants in
legislation in 1869, many wise measures were not thought of, many
injudicious acts were passed. But in the administration of affairs
for the next four years, having learned by experience the result of
bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touching every
department of state, county, municipal and town governments. These
enactments are today upon the statute books of South Carolina. They
stand as living witnesses of the Negro's fitness to vote and
legislate upon the rights of mankind.
"When we came into power town governments could lend the credit of
their respective towns to secure funds at any rate of interest that
the council saw fit to pay. Some of the towns paid as high as 20
per cent. We passed an act prohibiting town governments from
pledging the credit of their hamlets for money bearing a greater
rate of interest than 5 per cent.
"Up to 1874, inclusive, the State Treasurer had the power to pay
out State funds as he pleased. He could elect whether he would pay
out the funds on appropriations that would place the money in the
hands of the peculators, or would apply them to appropriations that
were honest and necessary. We saw the evil of this and passed an
act making specific levies and collections of taxes for specific
appropriations.
"Another source of profligacy in the expenditure of funds was the
law that provided for and empowered the levying and collecting of
special taxes by school districts, in the name of the schools. We
saw its evil and by a constitutional amendment provided that there
should only be levied and collected annually a tax of two mills for
school purposes, and took away from the school districts the power
to levy and to collect taxes of any kind. By this act we cured the
evils that had been inflicted upon us in the name of the schools,
settled the public school question for all time to come, and
established the system upon an honest, financial basis.
"Next, we learned during the period from 1869 to 1874, inclusive,
that what was denominated the floating indebtedness, covering the
printing schemes and other indefinite expenditures, amounted to
nearly $2,000,000. A conference was called of the leading Negro
representatives in the two houses together with the State
Treasurer, also a Negro. After this conference we passed an act for
the purpose of ascertaining the bona fide floating debt and found
that it did not amount to more than $250,000 for the four years; we
created a commission to sift that indebtedness and to scale it.
Hence when the Democratic party came into power they found the
floating debt covering the legislative and all other expenditures,
fixed at the certain sum of $250,000. This same class of Negro
legislators led by the State Treasurer, Mr. F. L. Cardoza, knowing
that there were millions of fraudulent bonds charged against the
credit of the state, passed another act to ascertain the true
bonded indebtedness, and to provide for its settlement. Under this
law, at one sweep, those entrusted with the power to do so, through
Negro legislators, stamped six millions of bonds, denominated as
conversion bonds, "fraudulent." The commission did not finish its
work before 1876. In that year, when the Hampton government came
into power, there were still to be examined into and settled under
the terms of the act passed by us providing for the legitimate
bonded indebtedness of the state, a little over two and a half
million dollars worth of bonds and coupons which had not been
passed upon.
"Governor Hampton, General Hagood, Judge Simonton, Judge Wallace
and in fact, all of the conservative thinking Democrats aligned
themselves under the provision enacted by us for the certain and
final settlement of the bonded indebtedness and appealed to their
Democratic legislators to stand by the Republican legislation on
the subject and to confirm it. A faction in the Democratic party
obtained a majority of the Democrats in the legislature against
settling the question and they endeavored to open up anew the whole
subject of the state debt. We had a little over thirty members in
the house and enough Republican senators to sustain the Hampton
conservative faction and to stand up for honest finance, or by our
votes place the debt question of the old state into the hands of
the plunderers and peculators. We were appealed to by General
Hagood, through me, and my answer to him was in these words:
'General, our people have learned the difference between profligate
and honest legislation. We have passed acts of financial reform,
and with the assistance of God when the vote shall have been taken,
you will be able to record for the thirty odd Negroes, slandered
though they have been through the press, that they voted solidly
with you all for honest legislation and the preservation of the
credit of the state.' The thirty odd Negroes in the legislature and
their senators, by their votes did settle the debt question and
saved the state $13,000,000. We were eight years in power. We had
built school houses, established charitable institutions, built and
maintained the penitentiary system, provided for the education of
the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jails and court houses, rebuilt the
bridges and re-established the ferries. In short, we had
reconstructed the state and placed it upon the road to prosperity
and, at the same time, by our acts of financial reform transmitted
to the Hampton Government an indebtedness not greater by more than
$2,500,000 than was the bonded debt of the State in 1868, before
the Republican Negroes and their white allies came into power."
With the disgraceful dicker of 1877, this era closed, and with it passed
away for a time, whose limit has not yet been fixed, whatever there has
been, of republican government in the South. How the overthrow of
Reconstruction government was accomplished is well-known. The
significance of its overthrow is that it marked the arrogant reassertion
of the malignant and desperate purpose of the southern oligarchy,
trained in the absolutism of slave mastery, to despoil the Negro of the
rights of citizenship, and to reduce him to a state of serfdom.
In the preparation for the execution of this infamous purpose, they
attempted and succeeded in accomplishing what does great credit to the
sheer audacity of southern political leadership. By sublime
dissimulation they hoodwinked the other sections of the country in
regard to the South's attitude to the Negro. Their first maneuver was
to give the Negro a bad reputation and denounce as mischievous meddlers
those who insisted that he be dealt with justly. The Southern oligarchy
put forward its youngest and best men. Its first point of attack was
Massachusetts; and thither went Grady and Gordon and Watterson who with
persuasive accent plead the cause of the "New South." With charming
recklessness of statement, they proclaimed the era of sectional
fraternity and with consummate cunning set forth in the next breath to
eastern capitalists the industrial possibilities of the South. Gradually
they reached the climax of their mission, to wit: Leave the Negro to us:
we are his friends, his natural guardians: we know him better than you
do, and can more wisely fix his status in our social scheme. Then the
old, old story was repeated with endless refrain, of the Negro's
ignorance, criminal tendencies (fully attested by timely news dispatches
from the South), of his inferiority, and of the menace he is to
Anglo-Saxon domination.
Thus while the sons of slave masters were poisoning the minds of the
north and west, the slave drivers were at home perfecting the conspiracy
against Negro citizenship.
The year 1890 witnessed the beginning of the execution of this
conspiracy which promises to continue until the Negro is divested of
every right which is worth the having. In 1890 a minority of the people
of the state of Mississippi arrogated to themselves the right to despoil
the majority of the citizens of that state of the rights of free men by
nullifying the Fifteenth Amendment.
II
Before considering the new constitutions of the States of Mississippi,
South Carolina and Louisiana, and the decisions of courts respecting
them, I have deemed it proper to review the history of Negro Suffrage
and to indicate the unvarying attitude of the ruling classes of the
South towards it. In the light of this history, let us now briefly
examine these recent enactments in their relation to the political
rights of the Negro.
It is no secret that the avowed purpose of the framers of these
instruments was to deprive the Negro of the right to vote. Their purpose
is not more startling than is the defiance with which they have hurled
it from the housetops. This purpose they claim to have accomplished by
taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty of the Negro; but the most
cursory glance at these enactments will convince any one that neither
intelligence nor wealth constitutes the basis of electoral qualification
under them, while the confessions of the framers of them as well as
their operation proves that neither ignorance nor poverty serves to
disqualify.
In Mississippi a Negro may be as rich as Dives and as wise as Solomon
and yet he may not be able to satisfy an ignorant and partisan
registration officer that he is qualified to be an elector; while a
white man may be as poor as Lazarus and may not possess the intellectual
outfit of a Hottentot and yet he will experience no difficulty in
convincing the same individual that he is qualified to exercise all the
rights and privileges of that class whose "destiny it is to dominate."
This is the sort of educational qualifications these great
constitutional documents prescribe!
How to disfranchise the Negro by an educational test without at the same
time disfranchising a very large number of white men, was at first a
problem that presented many difficulties to the framers of the
Mississippi document. Such a problem, however, cannot long remain a
difficult one to men who are masters of the art of legalizing fraud.
That the illiterate white vote might not, by the play of accident,
become eliminated by an educational test, it was provided that that part
of the constitution which prescribes it, was not to go into operation
until one year after the adoption of the constitution. Before the
expiration of that time another standard of qualification was provided
and all who qualified under it were not to be affected by the subsequent
operation of the educational test.
This latter provision is as follows, being section 241 of Article 12 of
the constitution of Mississippi, defining who are electors:
"Every male inhabitant of the state, except idiots, insane persons,
and Indians not taxed, who is a citizen of the United States,
twenty-one years of age and upwards, who has resided in the state
two years, and one year in the election district * * * in which he
offers to vote and who is duly registered as provided in this
article, and who has never been convicted of bribery, burglary,
theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense,
perjury, embezzlement, or bigamy, and who has paid on or before the
first day of February of the year in which he offers to vote, all
taxes which may have been legally required of him and who shall
produce to the officer holding the election satisfactory evidence
that he has paid his taxes."
Under this section of the Mississippi constitution, the white population
of that state qualified as electors. But to prevent the Negroes from
qualifying, section 242 of Article 12, further provides that persons
offering to register shall take the following oath:
"I do solemnly swear that I am twenty one years old and that I will
have resided in the state two years and (this) election district
for one year preceding the ensuing election, and am now in good
faith a resident of the same, and that I am not disqualified from
voting by reason of having been convicted of any of the crimes
mentioned in the constitution of this state as a disqualification
to be an elector, that I will truly answer _all questions
propounded to me concerning my antecedents so far as they relate to
my right to vote_ and also as to _my residence before my citizenship
in this district_, that I will support the constitution of the
United States and of the state of Mississippi and will bear true
faith and allegiance to the same--so help me God.
Any willful and corrupt false statement in said affidavit or in
answer to any material question propounded as herein authorized
shall be perjury."
In the foregoing provisions attention is called to the following:
(1) The crimes mentioned as disqualifying from voting are such as it is
always easy, when desirable, to convict the Negro of committing. Under
the present method of administering justice in the states where these
disfranchising constitutions operate, the Negro has neither any
guarantee of a fair and impartial trial nor any protection against
malicious prosecution or false accusations when it is convenient to
convict him.
(2) The penalty for not paying taxes almost a year before election day
is a disqualification from voting. But this of course is not the sole
penalty. Whether he is a qualified elector or not, every man must in the
case of real property pay his taxes, or suffer the loss of his property,
and certainly no man, not even the poorest of the Negroes and poor
whites, can escape the obligation of the poll tax by a mere forfeiture
of his right to vote.[11] Thus the penalty for not paying taxes is
twofold in so far as the Negro is concerned. The poor white man may or
may not experience any difficulty about producing "to the officer
holding the election satisfactory evidence that he has paid his taxes."
(3) The Negro who may desire to vote must answer under oath not certain
specific interrogatories concerning his antecedents and former places of
residence, but to "truly answer all questions propounded" to him, with
the understanding that the slightest mistake will be construed as a
corrupt and willful false statement exposing him to prosecution for
perjury, thus rendering him everlastingly disqualified to vote.
When, under the foregoing provision the white male inhabitants of the
state became qualified electors, the following provision, being section
244 of article 12 of the constitution of Mississippi, went into
operation:
"On and after the first day of January, 1892, every elector in
addition to the foregoing qualifications, shall be able to read any
section of the constitution of this state; or shall be able to
understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable
interpretation thereof."
This section contains the so-called educational test, and the elector's
qualifications under it are determined by a registration officer whose
discretion is as limitless as his prejudices. The registration officers
of South Carolina acting under a similar provision of the constitution
of that state required the Negroes who offered themselves for
registration to understand and explain section 4 of article 5 of the
constitution of South Carolina, which is as follows:
"The supreme courts shall have power to issue writs or orders of
injunctions, mandamus, quo warranto, prohibition, certiorari,
habeas corpus, and other original and remedial writs, etc."
Fearing apparently that these provisions of the constitution might not
prove a sufficient barrier to the Negro's intellect and cunning, the
legislature of Mississippi has gone the full length of the power granted
it, in its efforts to keep the Negro from voting. Section 3643 of the
code of 1892 of that state, which regulates the appointment of managers
of elections, contains this remarkably clever provision:
"The Commissions shall appoint three persons to be managers of
election, who shall not be of the same political party, _if
suitable persons of different political parties can be had in the
district_."
Imagine commissioners of election of the Mississippi type regarding a
Negro, or a white man known to be favorable to Negro suffrage, as a
"suitable person!"
One would suppose that the elector having successfully passed the ordeal
of the registration officer would be allowed smooth sailing during the
remainder of the voyage to the polls. But no; having passed Scylla, he
must encounter Charybdis at the very brink of the ballot box; for
section 3644 of the above mentioned Code provides that any of the
managers of election
"May examine on oath any person duly registered and offering to
vote touching his qualifications as an elector."
The effect of the constitution of Mississippi is to set up a standard of
qualification of a much higher intellectual scale than that of any of
the most enlightened states in the Union and to deprive a hundred and
eighty thousand citizens of the elective franchise previously enjoyed by
them.
The attempt is often made by southern politicians of the dominant class
to justify the Mississippi plan of disfranchisement by pointing to the
fact that Massachusetts, a northern state, has provided for a qualified
suffrage by the adoption of an educational test. But compared with the
Mississippi provision that of Massachusetts is as modest and simple as
the average Mississippi school house.
Amendment XX to the Massachusetts Constitution is as follows:
"No person shall have the right to vote, or be eligible to office
under the constitution of this commonwealth, who shall not be able
to read the constitution in the English language, and write his
name. _Provided however_, that the provisions of this amendment
shall not apply to any person prevented by physical disability from
complying with its requisition, _Nor to any person, who now has the
right to vote_, nor to any person who shall be sixty years of age
or upwards at the time this amendment shall take effect."
Thus Massachusetts requires that those wishing to exercise the elective
franchise in the future must be able merely to read the English
language; and expends annually more than four dollars per capita to
educate them; while Mississippi requires, not only future electors, but
those who have previously exercised the right to vote to give "_a
reasonable interpretation_" to the satisfaction of a registration
officer, and expends annually less than one dollar per capita for
education!
Here it may be well to state that, although the idea of a qualified
suffrage grew out of the desire and the necessity to prepare the foreign
born element of our population, aliens to our institutions and language,
for an intelligent exercise of the ballot, the Negro does not make
objection or complaint to a just and fair educational test of his
fitness to exercise the right of suffrage. Absolutely loyal to
republical institutions, he is willing to go as far as any in the matter
of fairly and justly protecting the ballot from abuses that grow out of
ignorance.
The Constitution of Mississippi has served as the pattern for the
disfranchising enactments of South Carolina and Louisiana. The main
provision in the South Carolina Constitution regulating suffrage is as
follows:
"Up to January 1, 1898, all male persons of voting age applying for
registration, who can read any section of this constitution
submitted to them, _or understand and explain it_ when read to them
by the registration officer, shall be entitled to registration and
become electors."
It will be observed that the understanding and interpreting clause of
the foregoing operates the reverse of that of the Constitution of
Mississippi. The South Carolina provision was limited to cease after
January 1, 1898, while that of Mississippi was limited to begin January
1, 1892 and to continue thereafter without ceasing.
Subdivision (d) of the above mentioned section of the South Carolina
Constitution provides as follows:
"Any person who shall apply for registration after January 1, 1898,
if otherwise qualified, shall be registered: _Provided_ that he can
both read and write any section of the constitution submitted to
him by the registration officer or can show that he owns and has
paid taxes collectible during the previous year on property in this
state assessed at three hundred dollars ($300) or more."
Subdivision (c) of the South Carolina law effected the disfranchisement
of more than one hundred thousand electors who had passed the legal age
of attending school. But for this fact, the provision of subdivision (d)
if fairly applied could meet with no objection. However, it cannot be
absolutely fair as long as South Carolina expends less money per capita
in the education of its Negro population than in the education of its
white population. The report of the Superintendent of Education of South
Carolina shows that it has cost $4.23 per capita to educate the white
children of the state and only $1.35 per capita to educate the colored
children.
When the present Constitution of South Carolina was in process of
construction, the Supreme Court of the United States had not passed upon
the legality of the so-called educational provision of the Mississippi
Constitution, and the possibility that it might in the near future
declare all such enactments repugnant to the Constitution of the United
States deterred the members of the South Carolina constitutional
convention from going the full length of the Mississippi plan. Although
they had assembled for no other purpose than to disfranchise the Negro,
yet out of fear of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution,
they failed to do all they purposed.
George L. Tillman, the brother of the present United States Senator from
that state, spoke in the convention the following significant and
pathetic words:
"Mr. President, we can all hope a great deal from the constitution
we have adopted. It is not such an instrument as we would have made
had we been a free people. We are not a free people; we have not
been since the war. I fear it will be some time before we can call
ourselves free. I have had that fact very painfully impressed upon
me for several years. _If we were free, instead of having Negro
suffrage we would have Negro slavery; instead of having the United
States Government we would have the Confederate States Government;
instead of paying $300,000 pension tribute we would be receiving
it._"[12]
The Constitution of Louisiana, in its attempt to disfranchise the Negro
and enfranchise, so to speak, every other class of men, the ignorant
scum of Europe, as well as the intelligent and illiterate native born
whites, outdoes both Mississippi and South Carolina. It adopts
practically the same educational and property qualifications as are
contained in the Mississippi and South Carolina instruments. The fifth
section of it furnishes a true index to the spirit which is behind all
of these disfranchising enactments. With vindictive memory, the framers
of the Louisiana Constitution qualified as electors all who were
entitled to vote on January 1, 1867 or at any date prior thereto as well
as the sons and grandsons of such persons, whether or not they possess
intelligence or property. Herein they display the same spirit which
refused to accord to the Negro the right to vote previous to 1867.
What has been the attitude of the Courts towards these enactments which
in the interest of oligarchy have set aside republican governments in
the South and nullified the Constitution of the United States?
Naturally, the state courts have upheld them. The most remarkable
judicial utterance since the famous Dred Scott decision is that of the
supreme court of Mississippi in the case of Ratliff vs. Beale,
predicated upon the constitution of Mississippi respecting the elective
franchise. The Court said:
"Within the field of permissible action, under the limitations
imposed by the Federal Constitution, the convention swept the
circle of expedients to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by
the Negro race. By reason of its previous condition of servitude
and dependence, this race had acquired or accentuated certain
peculiarities of habit, of temperament, and character, which
clearly distinguished it as a race from that of the whites--a
patient, docile people, careless, landless, and migratory within
narrow limits, without forethought, and its criminal members given
rather to furtive offenses than to the robust crimes of the whites.
_Restrained by the Federal Constitution from discriminating against
the Negro race, the convention discriminated against its
characteristics and the offenses to which its weaker members were
prone._"[13]
Thus a court created by this new constitution of Mississippi declares
that it, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment, discriminates against the
Negro race "by reason of its previous condition of servitude and
dependence," and at the same time upholds that instrument.
The constitutionality of these disfranchising enactments has not been
made a direct issue in the Supreme Court of the United States. The case
of Williams vs. State of Mississippi[14], the decision of which is
commonly supposed to have sustained their constitutionality, only
brought the question up collaterally without proper allegations or
sufficient proof. From an intimation made by the Court in this case, it
is not improbable that when a direct issue upon their constitutionality
is properly presented, it may render a decision consonant with that
which it rendered in the case of Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, wherein the Court
said:
"Though the law in itself be fair on its face and impartial in
appearance, yet, if it be applied and administered by public
authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as to
practically make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons
in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of
equal justice is still within the prohibition of the
Constitution."[15]
There are other grounds for the belief that the Federal Supreme Court
will refuse to sustain these instruments of disfranchisement, even
though it has not of recent years acted in a manner to inspire faith.
These enactments have never received the approval of the people of the
states. Of a total of 235,604 male citizens of voting age in South
Carolina in 1890, more than 102,000 of whom were white men, only 60,925
participated in the election of November 6, 1894, at which the members
of the constitutional convention were elected. Of the number thus voting
only 31,402 were counted in favor of holding the convention. Thus
one-seventh of the citizens called a convention and enacted a
constitution which disfranchised more than one hundred thousand
electors. The constitutions of Mississippi and Louisiana were adopted in
the same way.
These so called constitutions, besides being repugnant to the spirit and
purpose of the Fifteenth Amendment are also violative of the acts of
Congress restoring the rebellious states to the Union, which acts the
Federal Supreme Court has on several occasions declared
constitutional.[16]
Pursuant to the reconstruction legislation, these states adopted
constitutions admitting the Negro to the ballot and then asked to be
readmitted to representation in Congress. Congress, having approved of
their constitutions, enacted that they be entitled to representation in
Congress, "upon the following _fundamental_ conditions: That the
constitutions of neither of said states shall ever be so amended or
changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United
States of the right to vote in said states, who are entitled to vote by
the constitution thereof herein recognized."[17]
These states accepted these fundamental conditions and are consequently
bound by them.[18]