Cullud folk will be ready to fight When cullud folk has equal right. I a’nt so foolish as I seem to be. And it is a reasonable sentiment. The fact is, Negrodom has to a great extent qualified to vote. Half the population is sunk in economic bondage and illiteracy, but the other half has more than average capacity for citizenship. Yet in spite of the Constitution and the Federal authority these many millions remain practically without voice in all the Southern States. Physical force is exerted to keep them from the ballot box. The Southerner affects to believe that the educated Negro is even less fitted to have a vote than the illiterate sort. But that is because he hates to see the Negro rise. He will tell you that in certain States the Negroes outnumber the Whites by ten to one. But that is a characteristic misstatement. It is hard to find a city where the black vote exceeds the white. In the last census the blackest cities were Birmingham and Memphis, where the Negroes proved to be forty per cent. of the population, while in Richmond it was 37% Atlanta 34% Nashville 34% Washington 29% New Orleans 27% And there are only two States where the Negro population exceeds that of the White; namely, Mississippi and South Carolina, where the Negroes were 57 per cent. and 55 per cent. of the total population. If, as seems only fair, an illiteracy test were made legal by amendment of the Constitution, white voters would outnumber black by a large margin. As for having anything to fear from the educated Negro vote, there is of course one matter of anxiety. The Negro would be bound to fight for social justice, and violence would be done to racial prejudice. The South is, however, determined that the Negro shall never vote again. Year by year the colored people as a whole grow in intelligence, in capacity, and in the number of its intelligentsia, but the South is not moved. It sees no explosion in the future, and makes no provision for one—will not, till the explosion comes. Racial fear, no doubt, plays a large part in this determination, but there is a further consideration. The Solid South votes Democratic to a man. The Negro, if he had a chance, would vote as solidly Republican. I remember being present at a violent quarrel at a Negro meeting in New Orleans—one Negro, though he had not a vote, had actually called himself a Democrat. A remedying of the defective suffrage would be an enormous access of strength to the Republican party. For this reason Democrats exaggerate their racial fear. And also for that reason every Republican politician who gains power is bound to make a bid to break the solid South. Senator Lodge himself was the author of a “Force Bill” which came near enactment some years ago, and it would have placed Federal soldiers at every ballot box in the South, to protect black voters.