Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
History
Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
African Americans; United States -- Race relations
In spite of the domination of both parties in the South by narrowing
groups of leaders there are not wanting men to fight for a new alignment.
On the Republican side one of these men is Joseph C. Manning, of Alexander
City, Ala., who publishes a paper called the _Southern American_. He has
shown how white men are being disfranchised as well as Negroes, how the
South is controlled by a "Bourbon oligarchy" in the Democratic party and a
"federal-for-revenue" Republican party--as he calls them. His paper
appears every week with his denunciations in big letters, urging the
Republican party to reform and become a party of truth and progress.
He says:
THE RALLYING CRY
The great body of the people of the white South, the masses of the
white people of Alabama, are to-day suppressed by the strategy of a
political autocracy dominating under the guise and pretence of a
democracy.
Why not throw off the yoke and get in the fight?
Rise up above this petty delegate getting, patronage manipulating,
state chairman squabbling, until this small politics shall become
lost in the great and the supreme issue.
Stop this "lily-white" nonsense. Quit being sidetracked by this
Bourbon wail of Negro. Recognise this vital force of the immovable
truth that an injustice to one American citizen will react upon all.
You can't have one law for the white man and another for the Negro in
our form of government. You know that those who have the most talked
of suppressing blacks have really suppressed you, white Republicans,
and the most of the Southern whites.
The outcry of Negro and social equality and the like is the very
essence of political moonshine.
A number of men inside the Democratic party are not afraid to speak out.
Ex-Congressman Fleming of Georgia said in a notable address at Athens,
Ga.:
"Those whose stock in trade is 'hating the nigger' may easily gain some
temporary advantage for themselves in our white primaries, where it
requires no courage, either physical or moral, to strike those who have no
power to strike back--not even with a paper ballot. But these men will
achieve nothing permanent for the good of the state or of the nation by
stirring up race passion and prejudice. Injustice and persecution will not
solve any of the problems of the ages. God did not so ordain his universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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