Disf ranchisement of 
 
 Negroes 
 
 By THE REV. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES 
 

 H TS*ock 
 
 dap. r c^ 
 
 c Tkc Disf ranchisement of 
 Negroes 
 
 By THE REV. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES 
 
 
 THE CONDITION OF THE NEGRO 
 
 HE condition of the Negro in the South to-day is an 
 unspeakable disgrace to that American civilization of 
 ours which we are fond of describing as founded upon the 
 basic principle that “all men are created free and equal,’’ 
 and it is destined to be, I believe, centuries hence, one of 
 the wonders of human history that in the face of the oppres- 
 sion which is being visited upon ten millions and more of our fellow-citizens 
 at this moment, the rest of us are content to remain silent and indifferent. 
 
 The political freedom of the black man in this country was purchased 
 at a price which staggered the world. Blood was poured forth like water, 
 treasure was expended at the rate of millions a day, not in o r der merely that 
 the Union might be preserved, but, more, that the Negro might be eman- 
 cipated from the bonds of chattel slavery, and a government of the people, 
 for the people and by the people might for the first time be established upon 
 the earth. 
 
 A full half century has passed away since that momentous struggle 
 was completed, and yet to-day, when we turn to the South and ask regarding 
 the condition of our black brother, for whose freedom our fathers paid so 
 dearly, we find that his condition is little better than that of his father, who 
 was bought and sold upon the block. “The Negro to-day,’’ says an influential 
 New York clergyman, “is free on paper, the black man is one of our fellow- 
 zens in theory. He is reckoned as a man and not as an animal on the 
 tables of the United States census.’’ But, as a matter of fact, in the everyday 
 world of practical affairs, the Negro is still a slave, and if there is anything 
 that is perfectly plain in the public sentiment of the South, it is that the Negro 
 shall be made to keep that place of shameful subjection from which we 
 believed that he had been rescued by the blood and fury of the great rebellion. 
 He is denied the ballot. He is socially ostracized. He is excluded from 
 public buildings, railroad stations, libraries and theatres. He is denied justice 
 in our courts. He is held as a peon on countless plantations. He is oppressed, 
 degraded, enslaved in every political, industrial and social relation. 
 
THE FEAR OF AGITATION 
 
 And yet, in the face of this unspeakable situation, we find the people of 
 the North indifferent and complacent, and whenever any brave man arises to 
 speak his condemnation of this iniquity, he is denounced as a careless agitator 
 and ignorant fanatic. On every hand we are being told that the Negro 
 question is too delicate for public discussion, and that we must leave this 
 problem to be worked out naturally and quietly by the passage of time. We 
 are told that to discuss this question upon a basis of simple justice will hurt 
 business — as though business were of any importance when the life, liberty 
 and happiness of millions of human beings are at stake. We are told that to 
 discuss this question will offend the Southern whites — as though it were not 
 our duty to offend them when they are the arrogant and blinded oppressors 
 of an entire people. Are they not offending us, I should like to know, by 
 their denial to the black man of those rights of industrial opportunity and 
 political independence which have been bought and paid for by the blood 
 of tens of thousands of heroic men? We are told that to discuss this question 
 at the present time is inexpedient — as though expediency should ever be con- 
 sulted when “wrong rules the land and waiting justice sleeps.” The truth of 
 the matter is that there is but one thing to be considered here, and that is that 
 ten millions and more of our fellow-citizens are being denied those rights and 
 privileges which are legally and morally theirs, and any man who is silent 
 in the face of this oppression is himself a partner to the crime which is being 
 committed. Business, the feelings of our Southern fellow-citizens, questions 
 of expediency — all these things must be cast aside once and for all, and like 
 the Hebrew prophets of old, we must lift up our voices and spare not! It is 
 with the Negro question as with every other great social question of our time. 
 
 THE WIDE DEMAND FOR JUSTICE 
 
 We are living in an age which is characterized by a growing demand 
 for social justice. Never in the history of the world was there a time when 
 people were so eager for such readjustment of social conditions that high and 
 low, rich and poor, capitalist and laborer, shall be placed upon a plane of 
 equal privilege and opportunity. Justice is the great battle cry of the hour. 
 We are declaring that justice must be done to the laboring man who is injured 
 in the performance of his duty, and therefore Employers’ Liability Bills are 
 being introduced into all of our Legislatures. We are being told that justice 
 must be done to little boys and little girls, and therefore we are demanding 
 that child labor shall be abolished. We are being told that justice must be 
 done to the criminal, and therefore we are seeking great reforms in penal 
 legislation and administration. We are being told that justice must be done 
 to those who do the work of the world, and therefore we are fighting for an 
 
 4 
 
eight-hour day, for the abolition of the wage system, for the public ownership 
 of the means of production and distribution. We are being told that justice 
 must be done in the acquisition and distribution of wealth, and therefore we are 
 seeking vital reforms in our systems of taxation, so that the poor man shall not 
 be taxed of his poverty, and the rich man shall be made to pay those taxes 
 which he ought and is able to pay. We are demanding all of these great 
 changes in society because it is just that they should come. And we are 
 demanding that this justice should be done, not in the dim and distant future, 
 but to-morrow. And why, I ask you, does not the same thing hold true in our 
 treatment of the black man? Here is injustice of the grossest kind — here is 
 social inequity of the worst description — and why, in the name of common 
 sense, should this particular problem of justice be indefinitely postponed, while 
 all others are demanding and receiving immediate and uncompromising 
 consideration? 
 
 We are face to face here, after all, with a second great struggle for the 
 emancipation of an enslaved people, and in this second struggle we must take 
 as our motto the words which were made immortal by the great abolitionist 
 who was the leader of the first great fight for liberty here in America: “I am 
 in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single 
 inch, I will be heard.” If this is to be the spirit of this National Association 
 for the Advancement of Colored People, as I believe that it is, its work is the 
 work of God, and even though its numbers may at first be few, it may content 
 and strengthen itself with the thought that its two or three on the side of God 
 are the majority. 
 
 THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO 
 
 The new enslavement of the Negro manifests itself in strange and 
 various forms, but perhaps the most cruel and inexcusable of them all is that 
 which we know as disfranchisement. No sooner had the Negro been freed 
 by the 1 3th amendment to the Constitution than at once inquiry arose as to 
 whether he should be enfranchised. The answer was not slow in coming, for, 
 on February 13, 1868, Congress passed the 15th amendment to the Con- 
 stitution and on March 30, 1870, this was declared ratified by the necessary 
 three-fourths of the States. ‘‘The rights of the citizens of the United States 
 to vote,” the amendment read, ‘‘shall not be abridged by the United States, or 
 by any State, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” 
 Since the passing of this amendment, Negro suffrage has entered upon three 
 distinct stages, each one of which we must briefly describe. 
 
 The first period, which lasted ten years — till the spring of 1877 — 
 is best characterized as the period of Negro domination. It is a gloomy and 
 disheartening picture which we are obliged to contemplate. The Negro, just 
 freed from slavery, as unfit for the duties of responsible citizenship as a little 
 
child, was suddenly placed in full control of the State Governments of the 
 South, and the result was, of course, deplorable. Everywhere were misrule 
 and corruption, marked by incompetence on the part of the black man, and 
 extravagance and greed on the part of the white man. The memory of those 
 frightful “carpet-bag” days still haunts the South, and stands to-day as the 
 most persuasive argument against the extension of Negro suffrage. In spite of 
 all the misery of this period, however, this much must be said in behalf of 
 the ignorant Negro, unexpectedly confronted with the problems of government 
 — that had the Southern whites themselves undertaken, patiently and courage- 
 ously, the political leadership of the colored people, instead of sulking in 
 their tents like the Homeric Achilles, and leaving them a prey to the 
 unscrupulous adventurers who swarmed from the North like vultures, the story 
 of this epoch of Negro domination would have been far different. As it was, 
 business interests were ruined, the old order of society shattered, and all 
 political divisions deranged. Such a state of things could not last. But the 
 remedy was worse than the disease. Instead of using moral force, brute force 
 was adopted as the instrument for securing white supremacy. Colored voters 
 were intimidated and threatened, ballot boxes were systematically stuffed, and 
 forgery of tally sheets openly practised. Thus State after State was reclaimed, 
 and when, in 1877, President Hayes recognized these white State govern- 
 ments, Negro rule was a thing of the past. 
 
 ILLEGAL DISFRANCHISEMENT 
 
 Herewith began the second period of Negro suffrage, which lasted till 
 1890. This is the period of the illegal disfranchisement of the Negro. The 
 whites, now lords of all, were determined to retain what they had won. The 
 means employed to this end were violence against the blacks, fraud at the 
 voting booths, political, social and business ostracism of all the whites who in 
 any way showed sympathy for the Negro. The “white-cappers” and the 
 Ku-Klux clan performed their terrible work. But such a state of practical 
 anarchy could not long endure. The whites wearied of violence and fraud — 
 in Senator Tillman’s graphic words, “We’ve cheated the niggers, we’ve 
 threatened them, we’ve murdered them — and now we’re going to disfranchise 
 them.” In truth, legal disfranchisement of the Negro seemed the only path 
 open to the South, and, in 1890, the third period of Negro suffrage began, 
 which is one phase of that new enslavement of the black man which is 
 to-day the crying shame of our Republic. 
 
 ATTEMPTS AT LEGAL DISFRANCHISEMENT 
 
 Mississippi was the first State to disfranchise her Negro voters by legal 
 enactments. This was accomplished in 1 890 by a constitutional convention. 
 South Carolina followed the example of her sister State in 1895, Louisiana 
 in 1897, North Carolina in 1900, Virginia in 1902, Alabama in 1904, and 
 
other Southern States have lately joined, or, as in the case of Maryland and 
 Oklahoma, seem on the point of joining, this melancholy procession. In all these 
 States disqualification of the Negro voter has been based upon illiteracy — the 
 test of reading and writing. But when this scheme was first proposed in the 
 South there immediately appeared one great obstacle in the way of its 
 adoption. It soon became evident to the Southerners that, in disfranchising the 
 illiterate Negroes by the imposition of educational qualifications, they would 
 also have to disfranchise no small part of their white population — that part, 
 namely, which was below any educational standards high enough to shut out 
 the great mass of the Negroes. This was a serious matter, indeed, as is shown 
 by the fact that the percentage of illiterates in the white population over ten 
 years of age in the Southern States was 12 per cent, in 1900. To expect 
 such a proportion of the white voters to disfranchise themselves solely for the 
 sake of excluding the Negroes was certainly to expect too much. What, then, 
 was to be done? Obviously, some way must be found by which the illiterate 
 Negroes should be disfranchised and yet the ballot retained for the illiterate 
 whites. Southern ingenuity and the supposed necessities of the situation soon 
 solved the riddle, and to-day, without going into details, we find in general 
 two distinct modes by which this distinction between the white and the black 
 voters is accomplished. First, the law provides an educational qualification 
 for voters, with an ‘'understanding” clause for the ignorant whites. This 
 
 device is exemplified best in Mississippi and South Carolina. In the former 
 
 State the Constitution of 1 890, after providing that every male inhabitant 
 after a certain term of residence within the State shall have the right to vote, 
 makes the all-important reservation in section 244 that, in addition, ‘‘every 
 elector shall be able to read any section of the Constitution, or he shall be able 
 to understand' the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation 
 thereof.” The application of such a law as this of Mississippi is simplicity 
 itself. An ignorant white, unable to read, is given to interpret some such 
 
 clause of the Constitution as that providing that the State Legislature shall 
 
 consist of two houses; and, unless the applicant for registration be an idiot, he 
 of course passes the test with flying colors. An illiterate Negro now appears, 
 in identically the same predicament as his white neighbor. The registration 
 officer, seeing his black skin, gives him to interpret some such clause as that 
 providing for ex post facto laws, or that defining the writ of habeas corpus , 
 which a practised lawyer would find it difficult to explain clearly and fully, 
 with the inevitable result that the Negro is declared disqualified. The registra- 
 tion officer, in other words, is, by this so-called “understanding” clause, given 
 absolute powers of disqualification, and finds it entirely possible, in accordance 
 with the law, to give a vote to the white stevedore, who never read a word or 
 wrote a sentence in his life, and, on the other hand, to deny this vote to a 
 black college graduate. 
 
THE “GRANDFATHER” CLAUSE 
 
 But this mode of discrimination between white and black, as the earlier, 
 is also the more cumbersome and ineffective. The second mode of dis- 
 franchising the Negroes, to which I referred a moment ago, gets at the desired 
 result with far greater expedition and surety. This second mode provides an 
 educational qualification, like the first, but has in addition the famous “grand- 
 father” clause for illiterate whites. This is best exemplified in Louisiana 
 and North Carolina. The Constitution of Louisiana, for instance, after 
 making the usual educational, property and residence qualifications, provides 
 that “no male person who was on January 1, 1867, or at any date prior 
 thereto, entitled to vote, .... or no son or grandson of any such 
 person .... shall be denied the right to register and vote by reason 
 of his failure to possess the educational or property qualifications prescribed 
 by this Constitution.” Inasmuch as nobody but a white person could vote 
 prior to January 1, 1867, it is obvious at a glance that this Louisiana Con- 
 stitution, while rigidly disfranchising Negroes by its educational qualifications, 
 at the same time, through the medium of this so-called “grandfather” clause, 
 retains the ballot for all whites, whether they be educated or otherwise. 
 Under such a clause it is impossible for a registration officer to enfranchise a 
 Negro, and equally impossible for him to disfranchise a white. Even while 
 our cheeks burn with indignation at the iniquitous injustice of such a measure, 
 we cannot help admiring its masterful adaptation of means to ends. 
 
 THE NEGRO VOTE 
 
 Here, now, in this very brief and simple statement of the provisions of 
 the various disfranchisement laws of the South, do we have the story of how 
 they work to the disadvantage of every man who has a black skin. Nor is 
 this any mere theorizing upon my part, as may be shown by a few figures 
 revealing the astounding results of these provisions. In 1876, in the period 
 of Negro domination, the black vote in Louisiana was 75,315; in 1898, one 
 year after the passage of the constitutional enactment, in spite of the immense 
 increase of population, the vote had dwindled to 5,667; in 1876, in South 
 Carolina, the black vote amounted to 92,081, in 1898 it was only 2,823; 
 in 1876, in Mississippi, the black vote was 52,705, in 1898 it was a paltry 
 3,573. If fairly administered upon a sound basis of educational qualifica- 
 tions, the enactment of these laws would of course have meant a very substantial 
 reduction of the Negro vote in each one of these States. But any such 
 reduction as this which I have indicated is absurd, as is impressively shown 
 by the illiteracy figures of the census of 1 900. Thus in Louisiana, where the 
 Negro vote was reduced in one year over 92 per cent., and this without 
 taking into account at all the increase of the population in twenty years, 
 
 8 
 
the percentage of illiteracy was only 61 per cent. In Mississippi, where the 
 Negro vote, by the administration of these laws, was reduced 93 per cent., 
 the percentage of illiteracy was only 49. 1 per cent. And in South Carolina, 
 where the Negro vote was reduced almost 97 per cent., the percentage of 
 illiterates among the blacks was only 32 per cent. Such figures as these 
 show us that the Negro in the South to-day is disfranchised almost as 
 effectively as before the Civil War, and disfranchised not because of illiteracy, 
 but because of color. 
 
 * 
 
 THE BALLOT AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 « Now, just here, in this statement of the provisions of the disfranchise- 
 
 ment laws, and in these figures which show the actual working of these laws, 
 do we have a perfectly clear revelation of the damnable iniquity of this whole 
 business. The story which here is told of the disfranchisement of one great 
 portion of our population might seem possible in darkest Russia, but seems 
 literally inconceivable in democratic America one hundred and thirty-four 
 years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and forty-seven 
 years after the announcement of the Proclamation of Emancipation. For 
 the one thing for which our country stands, as we like to think, is free govern- 
 ment, and the very essence of that freedom in government is the exercise by 
 all men of the right of franchise. The ballot is the instrument of democracy, 
 and the ballot box is its symbol. All the long battles for political freedom 
 have centered around this very question of voting. Ever since the year 1 832 
 the English people have slowly but surely been building in their nation, amid 
 all its inheritance of monarchy and aristocracy, the fabric of free government, 
 and every forward step in this great struggle has been signalized by the 
 extension of the right of franchise to larger and larger sections of the popula- 
 tion. To-day political democracy has truly been won in England, and now, 
 this victory secured, we find them advancing into the greater battle for 
 industrial democracy. In much the same way we see the fight being joined 
 at this moment in the Kingdom of Prussia for true political democracy, and 
 the fight here centers around the extension of the franchise to all men, regard- 
 less of social standing or property qualifications. It is only a few years since 
 Russia seemed to be on the verge of a great political revolution, and there, 
 as in Prussia and England, the fight centered around the demands of the 
 peasantry for the right to vote for their representatives in Parliament. And 
 so in this country, when the Negro was freed from the bonds of slavery, by 
 the Emancipation Proclamation, and when this freedom, as was then thought, 
 had been constitutionally secured by the passage of the 1 3th amendment in 
 1863, the statesmen of that era realized that the freedom which had been 
 bought at so dear a price was literally worth nothing unless there went with 
 it the right to every Negro to exercise the franchise. The passage of the 
 
 9 
 
14th and 15th amendments granting the vote to the colored man of the South 
 may not have been a wise piece of statesmanship — it may be true that from 
 the standpoint of expediency it hindered rather than furthered the uplift of 
 the Negro population — but I for one confess that I glory in the enactment of 
 those constitutional amendments, since their adoption showed once and for all 
 to the world that the representatives of American democracy understood that, 
 in affairs political, liberty means the right to vote and to be represented in the 
 machinery of governmental administration. “The ballot,” says William A. 
 
 Sinclair in that stirring book of his, “The Aftermath of Slavery,” “is the * 
 
 citadel of the colored man’s safety ; the guarantor of his liberty ; the protector 
 
 of his rights; the defender of his immunities and privileges; the savior of the 
 
 fruits of his toil; his weapon of offence and defence; his peacemaker; his * 
 
 Nemesis that watches and guards over him with sleepless eye by day and by 
 
 night. With the ballot the Negro is a man; an American among Americans. 
 
 Without the ballot he is a serf, less than a slave; a thing.” 
 
 REASONABLE RESTRICTION OF THE BALLOT 
 
 This is definitely true, and hence the iniquity of the disfranchisement 
 of the Negro. This does not mean, of course, that all disfranchisement for 
 any reason whatsoever is wrong under a democratic form of government. Not 
 at all. I for one believe most emphatically in the limitation of the right of 
 suffrage; and this for the proper safeguarding of our free institutions. But 
 there are three conditions of such limitation which must be observed if justice 
 is to be done and the principles of true democracy observed. In the first 
 place, disfranchisement must be along horizontal and not vertical lines. This 
 means that the restrictions upon the suffrage must be of such a character as 
 to apply indiscriminately to all classes of the population without regard to 
 “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Thus, the State of Massa- 
 chusetts limits the suffrage to those who can read and write; but this restriction, 
 as I need not point out, applies to the white man as absolutely as it does to 
 the black man. In the second place, the restrictions placed upon the suffrage 
 must be such as can be overcome by the easy effort of any intelligent and 
 ambitious man. That is to say, the conditions of disfranchisement must be 
 artificial and not natural. Here, again, the educational qualification for 
 voters which is in operation in Massachusetts is a case in point. The require- 
 ment that the voter shall read and write is a purely artificial requirement, 
 determined by the necessities of efficient government. And since it is artificial, 
 it can be overcome by any man who desires to give time and strength to meet- 
 ing its demands. And in the third place, the State, in limiting its suffrage by 
 artificial restrictions, is thereby in duty bound to do everything within its 
 power to make it possible for all disfranchised voters to become capable of 
 passing the test exacted. Thus in Massachusetts the test is educational, and 
 
 10 
 
for this reason Massachusetts feels herself to be in honor bound to establish 
 a perfect system of public school education, so that there may be no man 
 within the bounds of the commonwealth who does not know how to read and 
 write, and therefore is not able to pass the test of the franchise. 
 
 Now, the iniquity and injustice of the disfranchisement laws of the South 
 lie in the fact that they run along vertical and not horizontal lines. A man 
 is disfranchised, not because he cannot meet the educational demands of the 
 law, but because he has a black skin, and his father did not chance to vote 
 previous to January, 1867. In the second place, the restrictions placed 
 upon the franchise by these Southern laws are natural and not artificial, and 
 therefore cannot be overcome by any disfranchised citizen. It is as impossible 
 for a Negro to change the color of his skin as for the leopard to change his 
 spots, and therefore the black man, disfranchised by “understanding” clauses 
 and “grandfather” clauses, finds that there is nothing that he can do that will 
 enable him to become a voter. And third, the Southern States — granted that 
 the educational requirements of their laws were fairly administered to white 
 and black alike, which of course is not the case — are doing little or nothing 
 to enable the black man to meet these educational requirements. The public 
 school system in the South, so far as the black man is concerned, is a roaring 
 farce ; and I believe that there is nothing that stands so much in the way of the 
 establishment of an adequate educational system for the Southern black as 
 the fear that the Negroes may become able to pass even the test of the 
 “understanding” clause, and thereby become voters. 
 
 THE BETRAYAL OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 The injustice, therefore, of the Southern laws of disfranchisement is to 
 be found in the first place in the simple fact that it is a betrayal of the ideals 
 of democracy and a gross subversion of the principles of free government. 
 An entire class is outlawed from the State, a whole people is taxed without 
 representation, an entire race is condemned to perpetual serfdom. If the 
 equality of men means anything, it means equality of opportunity, and if 
 equality of opportunity means anything in terms of politics or government, it 
 means the equal opportunity of every man to cast one vote to decide the issues 
 of administration, and to elect representatives in Legislature and Congress. 
 We realize that we have at least the beginnings of a truly democratic govern- 
 ment here in America when, upon election day, we see rich and poor, high and 
 low, men of every race and color and condition, walking side by side to the 
 same ballot box and casting into that ballot box a ballot, which, regardless 
 of the man casting it, counts one in the determination of the political issue 
 which is at stake. If one man, competent to know at all what he is doing, 
 is denied the right to stand by that ballot box upon a plane of perfect equality 
 with all his fellows, and denied this right upon grounds for which he is not 
 
responsible and which he cannot by any personal effort overcome, free govern- 
 ment is to that extent subverted. What would we think if a law should be 
 passed disfranchising a man because he is a Jew? What would we think 
 if a Republican Legislature of New York should disfranchise all of the 
 political districts of Tammany East Side? Why, we should cry that 
 democracy was at an end and free government destroyed; and yet it is exactly 
 this thing which is done to-day in the majority of the Southern States. 
 
 DEFIANCE OF LAW 
 
 But there is a second result of the workings of these disfranchisement 
 laws of the South which is even more serious than that of which I have just 
 spoken. I refer to the fact that these laws involve not merely the subversion 
 of our free government, but the subversion of all government whatsoever. 
 
 These laws — if I may be pardoned the apparent contradiction — mean 
 anarchy; and the Southern statesmen who have written them upon their statute 
 books are the most dangerous anarchists with which our country has to deal. 
 
 If any statement in the Constitution of the United States is perfectly clear — 
 if any portion of that Constitution was adopted by the united sentiment of a 
 great people — if any paragraph was formulated to meet a perfectly definite 
 situation — it is the 15th amendment, which specifically denies to the United 
 States, or to any State, the right to abridge the franchise “because of race, 
 color or previous condition of servitude.” And here to-day do we find this 
 sacred provision of our Constitution, which is written in letters of blood, 
 openly defied by a half dozen or more of the sovereign States of America. 
 
 I do not believe that I have aay more respect for this somewhat antiquated 
 Constitution than the next man. I believe that there are few things more 
 dangerous to national progress than the foolish worship of this instrument 
 which now possesses the hearts of the great mass of our population. I believe 
 that the Constitution is more and more coming to be a stumbling block in 
 the path of the nation. I know of nothing more farcically ridiculous than the 
 solemn attempts of our Supreme Court to decide as to whether some elaborate 
 piece of legislation regarding railroads or corporations is consistent with a 
 governmental instrument which was drawn up to meet the conditions of 1787. 
 
 I would gladly see the whole thing cast into a melting pot and a new one 
 
 moulded to meet the needs of here and now. But I recognize no less fully 
 
 the absolute necessity of obeying the present Constitution until we have a new 
 
 and better one. And while it may be little short of impossible to tell whether ^ 
 
 or not an interstate commerce law is constitutional (and such a question is 
 
 usually decided in the Supreme Court by a five to four vote), I believe that 
 
 it is not impossible to tell whether or not a Southern disfranchisement law is ^ 
 
 constitutional. 
 
 12 
 
THE FAILURE OF THE COURTS 
 
 Say what you will, the Constitution declares that the franchise shall not 
 be denied to a man because he is black — and, say what you will, these 
 Southerners declare that the franchise shall be denied to a man because he 
 is black. To be sure, these laws do not provide this in so many words; but 
 this is what they intend to do, and what they succeed in doing most admir- 
 ably. Never were means adapted to ends with more diabolical cleverness. 
 And yet the courts cannot or will not interfere. What we need is a little more 
 common sense in our administration of justice, which shall enable the courts 
 to cling less closely to the “letter which killeth,” else will anarchy be every- 
 where triumphant and orderly government at an end. Professor Ross, in his 
 recent book, entitled “Latter-day Saints and Sinners,” declared that the 
 defiance of law through the mockeries of judicial interpretation is one of the 
 greatest perils to American society to-day. To illustrate his meaning he cites 
 a case “in an Oregon city” where two men beat a woman on the street with 
 a heavy strap. They were convicted by a jury under a statute which pro- 
 vided that “if any person shall assault and beat another with a cowhide, whip, 
 stick, or like thing, such person shall be punished by imprisonment in the 
 penitentiary not less than one nor more than ten years.” And then he tells us 
 how the case was appealed, and the men acquitted by the Supreme Court on 
 the plea that the statute “contained nothing to bring the strap within the class 
 of instruments mentioned under cowhide, whip, stick, or like thing.” This is 
 a convincing illustration of this legal anarchy — but ten times more convincing, 
 to my mind, are the wonderful laws which deny a man the franchise because 
 his grandfather did not vote before January, 1867, and yet do not conflict 
 with the constitutional provision that no State shall abridge the right to vote 
 “because of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” If these laws 
 are to stand — if no President or Congress or Supreme Court can be found to 
 resist these acts of nullification, then we might as well admit that our govern- 
 ment is at an end, save as an instrument of oppression, and the liberties of none 
 of us are safe. 
 
 DISFRANCHISEMENT AND RELIGION 
 
 But there is still another result of these disfranchisement laws, which 
 means much to me and ought to mean much to every serious man. I mean 
 their wanton and arrogant defiance of the ideals of our religion. I know that 
 it is not common to-day to bring religious principles into consideration of such 
 practical questions as this. But if I am myself a minister for any one reason, 
 it is because I believe with all my heart and soul that religion is the greatest 
 thing in the world, and, ultimately considered, is the commanding factor in 
 every human relation. No problem is settled, said Wendell Phillips, till it is 
 settled right — which, being interpreted, means that no problem is settled until 
 
it is settled in harmony with those eternal and universal ideals of truth which 
 we mean by the idea of God. Now, if there is any religious truth which 
 is fundamental, it is that of the brotherhood of man — and we are all agreed 
 that religion will never have fulfilled its appointed task upon the earth until the 
 ideal of human brotherhood is everywhere recognized and established. And 
 we are also all agreed — those at least who have studied the question from 
 the higher religious point of view — that the only definite obstacle in the way 
 of the realization of this coveted brotherhood is that peculiar psychological 
 feeling which nobody can explain or define, and which, for lack of a better 
 word, I must call “prejudice.” By this I mean a kind of inborn, instinctive 
 antipathy which one race cherishes for another race, one nationality for another 
 nationality, one individual for another individual. Nobody can give any 
 satisfactory reason for the existence of these antipathies, and the person holding 
 them is the last person in the world to be able to justify his feelings upon a 
 basis of rationality. But the prejudice is there, irrational, absurd, and yet 
 one of the elemental and momentous facts of human life. The young child, 
 without any training — in sheer caprice — will manifest the most violent antipathy 
 for certain other human beings and even for certain animals. And this quality 
 of prejudice is carried over with us into mature life and becomes one of the 
 most distinctive characteristics of our individualities. And the catastrophe 
 comes when these antipathies are confined not merely to individuals, but 
 become characteristics of social groups, and are regarded not as merely per- 
 sonal and more or less ridiculous whims or fancies, and so treated, but are 
 regarded as phenomena of scientific meaning. Now it is this senseless prejudice 
 which lies at the bottom of the existing alienation between the white man and the 
 black. Endless attempts have been made to justify this antipathy upon historical 
 and scientific grounds. It has been argued a thousand times that the Negro 
 is of an inferior race, that he is incapable of civilized development, that he is 
 nearer to the stage of the animal than the human, and must always so remain. 
 But none of these serious attempts to dignify and explain this absurd prejudice 
 has ever succeeded, for the simple reason that it has no more basis in actual 
 fact that a woman’s dread of a mouse, or a cat’s hostility to a dog. Indeed, 
 if we want to understand the whole illusory character of this prejudice of the 
 Southern white man against the black man, we only have to watch to-day 
 the growing prejudice of our fellow-citizens on the Pacific Coast against the 
 yellow man. The Westerners have no antipathy for the Negro, any more 
 than the Southerners have antipathy for the Japanese — and yet each justifies 
 his absurd illusion by exactly the same arguments of racial inferiority and 
 degradation. Prejudice ! Prejudice against races, nations, classes, individuals 
 — it is this which hopelessly divides mankind and makes human brotherhood 
 seemingly impossible. 
 
SCIENCE AND PREJUDICE 
 
 Josiah Royce, of Harvard, one of the leading psychologists of our time, 
 made an elaborate study of this matter of prejudice a few years ago, and 
 pronounced it a pure “illusion,” not to be “sanctified by the name of science.” 
 He recognized that it was these senseless antipathies which were behind nearly 
 all racial hatreds, class hatreds, religious hatreds, and admitted that they must 
 for long play their part in human history. “But,” he continued, “what we 
 can do about them is to try not to be fooled by them — not to take them 
 seriously. We can remember that they are childish phenomena in our lives, 
 phenomena on a level with a dread of snakes, or of mice, phenomena which we 
 share with the cats and dogs, not noble phenomena, but silly caprices of our 
 complex natures.” 
 
 Now, it is to my mind the crowning iniquity of these laws of dis- 
 franchisement, which we are discussing, that they take up these “silly caprices,” 
 as Professor Royce well calls them, and make of them the basis of govern- 
 ment and the condition of organized society, and thereby make a mockery of 
 the religion of human brotherhood which we profess to practice. Nay, do 
 more than this — use all the power of the State to make impossible the realiza- 
 tion of this supreme religious ideal. For while I believe that the Negro is in 
 no way constitutionally inferior to the white — while I believe that he is 
 capable of endless development in all civilized practices and achievements — 
 while I believe that the door is open to him into all the realms of music, art, 
 poetry, religion, I also believe that the erection of a foolish prejudice into a 
 basis of government and a condition of social organization, which is the 
 immediate result of disfranchisement laws, is bound to degrade the Negro, 
 to reduce him to a level of inferiority where he does not naturally belong, and 
 thus shut him out forever from the circle of the human family. You may 
 educate the Negro industrially for a thousand years — you may teach him to 
 grow the best sweet potatoes in the Western hemisphere — you may make 
 him supremely efficient as a “hewer of wood and drawer of water,” but if 
 you refuse to him the equal rights of citizenship, you perpetuate and sanctify 
 prejudice, and thus postpone indefinitely all hope of that human brotherhood 
 of which every true prophet has dreamed, and for which every true servant of 
 humanity has bravely labored. My friends, when all things have been said 
 and done, I denounce the disfranchisement of the Negro because it prostitutes 
 the State to the shameful work of mocking and paralyzing the religion that 
 I preach. 
 
 THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT 
 OF COLORED PEOPLE 
 
 Here, now, are some of the results of disfranchisement of the Negro. 
 First, the subversion of the ideals of political democracy; second, the anar- 
 
0112 
 
 3 
 
 361 587975 
 
 J 
 
 chistic destruction of the fabric of our American government, uiird, the 
 nullifying of the true ideals of absolute religion. Other results are obvious 
 — these are the ones which interest me. And what can we do about 
 it? Some may say one thing, some another. I offer but one method of 
 crusading — the one that interests me as a preacher. We can agitate, discuss, 
 denounce, trouble, America to-day, as Elijah of old troubled Israel. We can 
 keep up the agitation against this insidious form of slavery, as Garrison and 
 Phillips and Parker, in the face of the most bitter and cruel opposition, 
 kept up the agitation against the earlier and more obvious form of slavery. 
 We can keep this abomination before the people, knowing for our confidence 
 and hope, that a straight appeal to the conscience of the American people 
 has never yet failed of response. And it is to this work of keeping it before 
 the people that I trust this Association may dedicate itself. 
 
 Publications of the National Association for the Advancement of 
 Colored People. Price 5 cents; $3.00 per hundred. Address 26 Vesey 
 Street, New York.