African Americans; United States -- Race relations
Under the new suffrage law of Mr. Booker T. Washington's state of
Alabama. Montgomery county, which has 53,000 Negroes, disfranchises
all but one hundred of them. In 1908 the Democrats of West Virginia
declared in their platform that the United States Constitution should
be so amended so as to disfranchise all the Negroes of the country. In
December, 1910, the lower house of the Texas legislature, by a vote of
51 to 34, instructed its federal Senators and Congressmen to work for
the repeal of the two amendments to the national constitution which
confer the right of suffrage upon Negroes. But the funniest proposal
in that direction came from Georgia, where J. J. Slade proposed an
amendment to the state constitution to the effect that colored men
should be allowed to vote only if two =chaste= white women would swear
that they would trust them in the dark. But, however it has been
effected, whether by force or fraud, by methods wise or otherwise, the
great bulk of the Negroes of America are political pariahs to-day.
When it is remembered that they once had the right of suffrage, that
it was given them, not upon any principle of abstract right, but as a
means of protection from the organized ill-will of their white
neighbors, that that ill-will is now more effectively organized and in
possession of all the powers of the state,—it can be seen at a glance
that this spells subjection certain and complete.
II—Economic
Political rights are the only sure protection and guarantee of
economic rights. Every fool knows this. And yet, here in America
to-day we have people who tell Negroes that they ought not to agitate
for the ballot so long as they still have a chance to get work in the
south. And Negro leaders, hired by white capitalists who want cheap
labor-power, still continue to mislead both their own and other
people. The following facts will demonstrate the economic insecurity
of the Negro in the South.
Up to a few years ago systematic peonage was wide-spread in the South.
Now, peonage is slavery unsanctioned by law. In its essence it is more
degrading than mere chattel slavery. Any one who doubts this may look
to modern Mexico for proofs. This peonage in the South had reduced
many black men to slavery. And it isn't stamped out yet. It was on
January 3, 1911, that the Supreme Court, in the case of Alonzo Bailey,
declared unconstitutional the Alabama peonage law, which had been
upheld by the state Supreme Bench. About the same time W. S. Harlan, a
nephew of the late Justice Harlan of the United States Supreme Court,
and manager of a great lumber and turpentine trust, doing business in
Florida and Alabama, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment
and fined $5,000 for peonage. He has since been pardoned and had his
fine remitted by President Taft.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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