The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

1. Equal suffrage between the races in some parts of the country would doubtless precipitate a temporary disturbance, but it is not thinkable that under democratic institutions any group or class can be permanently or for a long while refused equal participation in the government under which they live and by which they are controlled. Shall we do evil that good may come?

2. Every appreciable increase in power among Negroes will be met with jealousy and repression by the whites. Unrestricted suffrage does not mean much when people have guns at the polls and dare other people to vote. Its inception would mean acute racial trouble, I think, but if the Negroes used the same means and methods to register their vote as the whites do to keep them from registering it, and kept it up long enough, ultimately conditions would be very much improved where Negroes constitute about half the population of a unit.

3. Yes. Even though Negroes might not vote intelligently at the outset, they would tend to vote for their own welfare. The Negro does not feel wholeheartedly that he is a part of the American people. But with the vote he would be in a better position to work for common ends. Though voting for the capitalist parties would not mean much to the Negro, a vote for the money barons is better than no vote at all.

4. Unrestricted suffrage is a right as well as a privilege. It is essential for building up the sense of responsibility and loyalty among any group of people in a democracy founded on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

5. Yes, the ballot is a protection which the Negro now is intelligent enough to use and keep. In the present segregated condition of the Negro, the ballot has a genuine property value. Police protection, better lighted and better paved streets, I am convinced, must come to him through the ballot or else he does not get them.

6. Unrestricted Negro suffrage would help a great deal in securing for Negroes the things it is possible to secure through the use of the ballot. Political parties, as well as the Negro himself, would realize the power of Negro suffrage and would doubtless be inclined to cater to that vote. The exercise of such unlimited suffrage is likely to increase for a time the tenseness in race relations, as the whites would not readily give up the domination they have secured. The agitation in Ohio and in the Middle West over the exercise by the Negro of his suffrage shows how clearly the white man fears the power of the ballot when used by the Negro.

7. Other things remaining the same, it would not.

8. Not necessarily by that fact alone. The ultimate value of the right of suffrage is conditioned by the intelligence with which that right is used.

9. This goes without saying. In Chicago, Negroes exercise considerable influence in the city administration, because of their strong political power. The same is true of New York and Cleveland. Apply this to the nation.

10. Yes.