LOUISIANA CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.
BY PROF. GEORGE W. HENDERSON, D.D., STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS.
A new and highly significant chapter has been written during the past year in the history of Louisiana. The state now has a new constitution and the convention, exhausted by the labors of three months, has adjourned. According to the law which called the convention, the result is final, this unusual procedure of denying the people the privilege of voting upon their organic law, being based upon the example of Mississippi.
The convention just adjourned is the third of its kind in the history of the South, or of the world, the first being the Mississippi convention of 1890, the second, the South Carolina convention of 1895. These facts illustrate the tendency of the South, especially the Gulf States, to move in unison in all legislation affecting their colored citizens.
The object of these conventions has been the disfranchisement of the colored people, so far as it could be done consistently with the 15th amendment, and, at the same time preserve the right as far as possible to white men.
In some parts of the country, many intelligent men who have lived only in an atmosphere of liberty and its unbroken traditions, have believed that the suffrage movement in the South was solely in the interest of clean politics and an intelligent electorate, but if the record just made by the Louisiana constitutional architects does not convince them that they have been mistaken, then they would not change their opinion though one should rise from the dead.
There is an important bit of history back of the present result. Two years ago the legislature submitted to the people an amendment limiting the right of the ballot by an educational and property test. That proposition was buried beneath a mountain of votes. This, perhaps, was not a fair test of the public sentiment in the question presented, for the reason that the amendment contained a vicious clause, empowering the forthcoming legislature to alter the law in its discretion, but it is undoubtedly true that no amendment conditioning the suffrage upon education and property could pass the ordeal of a popular vote. The politicians, however, were not to be discouraged by this defeat, and accordingly they passed through the legislature the bill which called the recent convention into being and made its results final without popular ratification.
So far as the enlightened sentiment of the state was concerned, there was undoubtedly, a strong desire for some change in the suffrage laws to prevent the corruption which ignorance made easy, and the fraud and violence which for years had filled law-respecting citizens with shame and humiliation. Vitally connected with the suffrage, was the subject of popular education; there was also the felt need of reforming the judiciary system.
After long weeks of painful travail, the suffrage committee presented an ordinance that filled the state with amazement, and was so palpably unconstitutional and so grotesquely absurd that according to United States Senator McEnery, it was regarded in Washington as a "joke." The committee quailed before the storm of popular indignation, and re-committed the ordinance to the suffrage committee. Yet the law which was finally passed, though lopped of some of its worst excrescences, is the same in principle, and will work out nearly the same results as the first proposition. It requires:—
1.—That every elector shall be able to read and write, or shall own property at an assessed valuation of not less than $300.
2.—Lacking these, he shall have been a voter in some state of the Union prior to January 1, 1867, or the son or grandson of such, and not less than twenty-one years old at the adoption of this constitution.
3.—Every foreigner naturalized prior to January 1, 1898, shall have the right to vote without regard to other qualifications.
The purpose, which was openly and constantly avowed, was to let in every illiterate white man and to shut out every illiterate colored man, and the provision it is thought, is elastic enough for the purpose.
The whole law curiously illustrates the triumph of politicians. A distinguished state senator said to the writer: "The convention is in the hands of politicians; the people are not in it." It adjourned May 12. Two members refused to sign the instrument, and a number of others were conveniently absent. Of the convention itself, one of its own members said: "I have never seen such a graveyard of political reputations." The Times-Democrat, probably by far the most influential democratic paper of the state, and which has fought the battle for an honest suffrage law with great ability, in its issue of May 13, makes this editorial comment: "No men ever received a greater trust than the members of the convention; and few have betrayed it worse; ... and no one doubts that the constitution would be overwhelmingly beaten if submitted to the popular vote." It also calls upon the people to overthrow it at the earliest opportunity.
The new constitution has certainly come into life under bad omens. It stands condemned as unconstitutional by the two United States senators, and by the ablest democratic lawyers in Congress. The State press is almost unanimous in its opposition—some on constitutional grounds, others on account of the clause which exempts foreigners from its operation as to the educational and property requirements; and it is evident that what public sentiment demanded was an honest law based upon intelligence and property with a poll tax prerequisite. In this public sentiment there were some gratifying revelations.
1. A strong opposition to the Mississippi and South Carolina laws, and to everything that savored of fraud.
2. A general respect for the 15th amendment, not so much on account of the principle of it as because it is a part of the supreme law of the country, and as such should be observed in good faith.
3. The confession, hitherto held back, that the evils attending our elections were not due solely to ignorant colored men, but quite as much to ignorant and vicious white men, and perhaps still more to the frauds practised by the election officers and unscrupulous politicians.
Vitally connected with the suffrage was the subject of public education. A memorial was framed setting forth the present condition of our public schools and asking for the establishment of a public colored normal school. Permission was given to present it to the committee on education. This memorial was ably sustained by well known educators, but the result did not meet expectations.
The object we had in view was two-fold—first, to forestall any hostile action against the colored schools by creating a strong public sentiment in their favor; second, to bring to pass, if possible, some positive legislation in their behalf.
The first point was fully accomplished. And it was no small gain. The debates show how thoroughly unfriendly the majority of the convention was to the citizenship of the colored people. It is therefore a great consolation to us that our public schools have not been crippled. But we had unmistakable evidence that harm was intended. The ordinance to discriminate against the colored schools was introduced by a member of the committee on education. So effective was our campaign, however, that the friends of this ordinance were put on the defensive, and in face of the public sentiment which we had created, they did not dare to press their measure.
In the discussion of the suffrage, the interesting fact was brought out, that of the 120,000 colored voters, 38,000 could read and write, and about 3,000 more would be let in under the property test. This is certainly a remarkable showing when the circumstances are considered. It is not a matter for great surprise that those who are hostile to colored suffrage should not be anxious to improve colored schools.
We still have hope, but we must win our Waterloo by success in the cause of popular education.