The real truth is that “white supremacy” has never been endangered;
for even in the days of Republican ascendancy all the great offices,
and a large majority of all the offices, were held by white men, and
no one ever thought of making it a Negro government. The suffrage
plan, as we have been informed, as agreed upon by the committee, is as
follows: Every male citizen twenty-one years of age who has not been
convicted of crime, and is not an idiot or an inmate of a prison or
a charitable institution, who can read a section of the Constitution
to the satisfaction of the officers of election, or who can explain
said section when read to him to the satisfaction of said officers, or
who pays taxes on $500 worth of real property; or who can satisfy the
election officers that he has paid all taxes due by him to the State,
and who shall be duly registered according to law, shall be entitled to
vote.
Every one of these provisions, as simple and just as they appear, when
read by the uninitiated, are freighted with fraud, corruption and
prostitution of the suffrage. For the officers of election are the sole
judges of the qualification of the elector, and can at their will make
the Negro vote or the white vote as large or as small as they choose.