Following the Color Line Part 35

The XV Amendment to the Const.i.tution could not really enfranchise the Negro slaves. Men must enfranchise themselves.

And this political equality by decree, not by growth and development, caused many of the woes of Reconstruction.

Two distinct impulses mark the effort of the South to disfranchise the Negro. The first was the blind revolt of Reconstruction times, in which force and fraud were frankly and openly applied. The effort to eliminate the Negro brought the white people together in one dominant party and the "Solid South" was born. For years this method sufficed; but in the meantime the Negro was getting a little education, acquiring self-consciousness, and developing leaders of more or less ability. It became necessary, therefore, both because the Negro was becoming more restive, less easily controlled by force, and because the awakening white man disliked and feared the basis of fraud on which his elections rested, to establish legal sanction for disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, to define the political status of the Negro by law.

Now, the truth is that the ma.s.s of Southerners have _never believed that the Negro has or should have any political rights_. The South as a whole does not now approve and never has approved of the voting Negro. A few Negroes vote everywhere, "but not enough," as a Southerner said to me, "to do any hurt."

The South, then, has been placed in the position of _providing by law for something that it did not really believe in_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLONEL JAMES LEWIS United States Receiver at New Orleans]

[Ill.u.s.tration: W. T. VERNON Register of the United States Treasury

Photograph by G. V. Buck]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RALPH W. TYLER An auditor of the Government at Washington]

It was prophesied that when the Negro was disfranchised by law and "eliminated from politics" the South would immediately stop discussing the Negro question and divide politically along new lines. But this has not happened. Though disfranchis.e.m.e.nt laws have been in force in Mississippi for years there is less division in the white party of that state than ever before.

Why is this so? Because the Negro, through gradual education and the acquisition of property, is becoming more and more a real as well as a potential factor in politics. For he is just beginning to be _really_ free. And the South has not yet decided how to deal with a Negro who owns property and is self-respecting and intelligent and who demands rights.

The South is suspicious of this new Negro: it dreads him; and the politicians in power are quick to play upon this sentiment in order that the South may remain solid and the present political leadership remain undisturbed.

For the South, however much it may talk of the ignorant ma.s.ses of Negroes, does not really fear them; it wants to keep them, and keep them ignorant.

It loves the ignorant, submissive old Negroes, the "mammies" and "uncles"; it wants Negroes who, as one Southerner put it to me, "will do the dirty work and not fuss about it." It wants Negroes who are really inferior and who _feel_ inferior. The Negro that the South fears and dislikes is the educated, property-owning Negro who is beginning to demand rights, to take his place among men as a citizen. This is not an unsupported statement of mine, but has been expressed over and over again by speakers and writers in every part of the South. I have before me a letter from Charles P.

Lane, editor of the Huntsville (Alabama) _Daily Tribune_, written to Governor Comer. It was published in the Atlanta _Const.i.tution_. The writer is arguing that the Negro disfranchis.e.m.e.nt laws in Alabama are too lenient, that they permit too many Negroes to vote. He says:

We thought then (in 1901, when the new Alabama Const.i.tution disfranchising the Negro was under discussion), as we do now, that the menace to peace, the danger to society and white supremacy was not in the illiterate Negro, but in the upper branches of Negro society, the educated, the man who, after ascertaining his political rights, forced the way to a.s.sert them.

He continues:

We, the Southern people, entertain no prejudice toward the ignorant per se inoffensive Negro. It is because we know him and for him we entertain a compa.s.sion. But our blood boils when the educated Negro a.s.serts himself politically. We regard each a.s.sertion as an unfriendly encroachment upon our native superior rights, and a dare-devil menace to our control of the affairs of the state.

In this are we not speaking the truth? Does not every Southern Caucasian "to the manor born" bear witness to this version? Hence we present that the way to dampen racial prejudice, avert the impending horrors, is to emasculate the Negro politically by repealing the XV Amendment of the Const.i.tution of the United States.

I use this statement of Mr. Lane's not because it represents the broadest and freest thought in the South, for it does not, but because it undoubtedly states frankly and clearly the point of view of the _majority_ of Southern people. It is the point of view which, talked all over Georgia last year, helped to elect Hoke Smith governor of the state, as it has elected other governors. Hoke Smith's argument was essentially this:

_Hoke Smith's Views_

The uneducated Negro is a good Negro; "he is contented to occupy the natural status of his race, the position of inferiority." The educated and intelligent Negro, who wants to vote, is a disturbing and threatening influence. We don't want him down here; let him go North.

This feeling regarding the educated Negro, who, as Mr. Lane says, "ascertains his rights and forces his way to a.s.sert them," is the basic fact in Southern politics. It is what keeps the white people welded together in a single party; it is what sternly checks revolts and discourages independence.

Keeping this fact in mind, let us look more intimately into Southern conditions.

Following ordinary usage I have spoken of the Solid South. As a matter of fact the South is not solid, nor is there a single party. The very existence of one strong party presupposes another, potentially as strong.

In the South to-day there are, as inevitably as human nature, two parties and two political points of view. And one is aristocratic and the other is democratic.

It is noteworthy in the pages of history that parties which were once democratic become in time aristocratic. We are accustomed for example, to look back upon Magna Charta as a mighty instrument of democracy; which it was; but it was not democracy according to our understanding of the word.

It merely subst.i.tuted a baronial oligarchy for the divine-right rule of one man, King John. It did not touch the downtrodden slaves, serfs and peasants of England. And yet that struggle of the barons was of profound moment in history, for it started the spirit of democracy on its way downward, it was the seed from which sprung English const.i.tutionalism, which finally flowered in the American republic.

Tillman, as I have shown, wrung democracy from the old slave-owning oligarchy. He conquered: he established a democracy in South Carolina which included poor whites as well as aristocrats. But Tillman in his fiery pleas for the rights of men no more considered the Negro than the old barons considered the serfs of their day in the struggle against King John. It was and is incomprehensible to him that the Negro "has any rights which the white man is bound to respect."

In short we have in the South the familiar and ancient division of social forces, but instead of two white parties, we now see a white aristocratic party, which seeks to control the government, monopolise learning, and supervise the division of labour and the products of labour, struggling with a democratic party consisting of a few white and many coloured people, which clamours for a part in the government. That, in plain words, is the true situation in the South to-day.

_Has the Spirit of Democracy Crossed the Colour Line?_

For democracy is like this: once its ferment begins to work in a nation it does not stop until it reaches and animates the uttermost man. Though Tillman's hatred and contempt of the Negro who has aspirations is without bounds, the spirit which he voiced in his wild campaigns does not stop at the colour line. Movements are so much greater than men, often going so much further than men intend. A prophet who stands out for truth as Tillman did cannot, having uttered it, thereafter limit it nor recall it.

As I have been travelling about the country, how often I have heard the same animating whisper from the Negroes that Tillman heard in older days among the poor whites:

"We are free; we are free."

Yes, Tillman and Vardaman are right; education, newspapers, books, commercial prosperity, are working in the Negro too; he, too, has the world-old disease of restlessness, ambition, hope. And many a Negro leader and many a Negro organisation--and that is what is causing the turmoil in the South, the fear of the white aristocracy--are voicing the equivalent of Tillman's bold words:

"Awake! arise! or be forever fallen."

Now we may talk all we like about the situation, we may say that the Negro is wrong in entertaining such ambitions, that his hopes can never be gratified, that he is doomed forever to menial and inferior occupations--the plain fact remains (as Tillman himself testifies), that the democratic spirit _has_ crossed the colour line irrespective of laws and conventions, that the Negro is restless with the ambition to rise, to enjoy all that is best, finest, most complete in this world. How humanly the ancient struggle between aristocracy seeking to maintain its "superiority" and democracy fighting for "equality" is repeating itself!

And this struggle in the South is complicated, deeply and variously, by the fact that the lower people are black and of a different race. They wear on their faces the badge of their position.

What is being done about it?

As every student of history is well aware, no aristocracy ever lets go until it is compelled to. How bitterly King John fought his barons; how bitterly the South Carolina gentlemen fought the rude Tillman! Having control of the government, the newspapers, the political parties, the schools, an aristocracy surrounds and fortifies itself with every possible safeguard. It maintains itself at any cost. And that is both human and natural; that is what is happening in the South to-day. Exactly the same conflict occurred before the war when the old slave-owning aristocracy (which everyone now acknowledges to have been wrong) was defending itself and the inst.i.tution upon which its existence depended. The old slave-owning aristocrats believed that they were made of finer clay than the "poor whites," that their rule was peculiarly beneficent, that if anything should happen to depose them the country would go to ruin and destruction. It was the old, old conviction, common to kings and oligarchies, that they were possessed of a divine right, a special and perpetual franchise from G.o.d.

_The White South Defends Itself_

The present white aristocratic party in the South is defending itself exactly after the manner of all aristocracies.

In the first place, having control of the government it has entrenched itself with laws. The moment, for example, that the Negro began to develop any real intelligence and leadership, the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt process was inst.i.tuted. Laws were so worded that every possible white man be admitted to the franchise and every possible Negro (regardless of his intelligence) be excluded. These laws now exist in nearly all the Southern states.

Although the XV Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution declares that the right to vote shall not be "denied or abridged ... on account of race or colour or previous condition of servitude," the South, in defence of its white aristocracy, has practically nullified this amendment. Governor Hoke Smith of Georgia, for example, said (June 9, 1906):

Legislation can be pa.s.sed which will ... not interfere with the right of any white man to vote, and get rid of 95 per cent. of the Negro voters.

Not only do the enacted laws disfranchise all possible Negroes, but many other Negroes who have enough property or education to qualify, are further disfranchised by the dishonest administration of those laws. For the machinery of government, being wholly in white hands, the registers and judges of election have power to keep out any Negro, however fit he may be. I know personally of many instances in which educated and well-to-do Negroes have been refused the right to register where ignorant white men were readily admitted.

The law, after all, in this matter, plays very little figure. The white majority has determined to control the government utterly and to give the Negro, whether educated or not, no political influence. That is the plain truth of the matter. Listen to Hoke Smith in his campaign pledge of last year:

"I favour, and if elected will urge with all my power, the elimination of the Negro from politics."

Let us also quote the plain-speaking Vardaman in his address of April, 1907, at Poplarville, Miss.:

How is the white man going to control the government? The way we do it is to pa.s.s laws to fit the white man and make the other people (Negroes) come to them.... If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.... The XV Amendment ought to be wiped out. We all agree on that. Then why don't we do it?

It may be argued that this violent expression does not represent the best sentiment of the South. It does not; and yet Vardaman, Tillman, Jeff Davis, Hoke Smith, and others of the type are _elected_, the _majority_ in their states support them. And I am talking here of politics, which deals with majorities. In a following chapter I shall hope to deal with the reconstructive and progressive minority in the South as it expresses itself especially in the more democratic border states like North Carolina.