against the Negro race, the Convention discriminated against its characteristics and the offences to which its criminal members are prone.” Beginning in 1890 the Southern States have, one by one, adopted new Constitutions or amended their old ones so as to change considerably the qualifications of voters. Suffrage amendments have been adopted by the Southern States in the following order: Mississippi,[710] 1890; South Carolina,[711] 1895; Louisiana,[712] 1898; North Carolina,[713] 1900; Alabama,[714] 1901; Virginia,[715] 1901; and Georgia,[716] 1908. Maryland[717] has made two separate attempts, one in 1905 and the other in 1909, to amend its Constitution, but has failed in both instances. Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas have not made any constitutional changes in the matter of suffrage which might be called “Suffrage Amendments.” The phrase, “the Suffrage Amendments in the South,” has been used so often that the idea prevails among those unfamiliar with the laws on the subject that suffrage qualifications in the Southern States are fundamentally different from those in other States. With the hope of making plain wherein suffrage laws in the South are similar to and wherein they differ from the corresponding laws of other States, a table of the qualifications of electors in all the States and Territories of the United States, including Alaska, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines, is given (see pp. 322–339). The requirements for voters will be taken in the order given in the tables and considered with reference to the ways in which they lend themselves to race distinctions and discriminations. _Citizenship_ In order to vote, one must be a citizen of the United States or an alien who has taken the formal step toward naturalization of declaring his intention to become a citizen, with the exception that, in a few States, an Indian who has severed his tribal relationship may vote. This suffrage qualification does not easily lend itself to race distinction or discrimination. It lies within the power of the United States, not of the States, to say what alien residents may become citizens.[718] If Congress says, as it does in the Chinese Exclusion Act,[719] that Chinese not natives of this country cannot become citizens, it follows that they cannot demand of a State the privilege of voting. At present, a statute[720] specially provides for the naturalization of aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent, requiring that the same rules shall apply to them as to free white persons.