As a spur to negro education the Mississippi constitution worked well. The Mississippi negroes who got their names on the voting list rose from 9,036 in 1892 to 16,965 in 1895. This result of the “plan” did not deter South Carolina from adopting it. Dread of negro domination haunted the Palmetto State the more in proportion as her white population, led by the enterprising Benjamin R. Tillman, who became governor and then senator, got control and set aside the “Bourbons.”
Benjamin R. Tillman.
So early as 1882 South Carolina passed a registration act which, amended in 1893 and 1894, compelled registration some four months before ordinary elections and required registry certificates to be produced at the polls. Other laws made the road to the ballot-box a labyrinth wherein not only most negroes but some whites were lost. The multiple ballot-boxes alone were a Chinese puzzle. This act was attacked as repugnant to the State and to the federal constitution. On May 8, 1895, Judge Goff of the United States Circuit Court declared it unconstitutional and enjoined the State from taking further action under it. But in June the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Goff and dissolved the injunction, leaving the way open for a convention.
The convention met on September 10th and adjourned on December 4, 1895. By the new constitution the Mississippi plan was to be followed until January 1, 1898. Any male citizen could be registered who was able to read a section of the constitution or to satisfy the election officers that he understood it when read to him. Those thus registered were to remain voters for life. After the date named applicants for registry must be able both to read and to write any section of the constitution or to show tax-receipts for poll-tax and for taxes on at least $300 worth of property. The property and the intelligence qualification each met with strenuous opposition, but it was thought that neither alone would serve the purpose.
The Louisiana constitution of 1898, in place of the Mississippi “understanding” clause or the Alabama “good character” clause, enacted the celebrated “grandfather” clause. The would-be voter must be able to read and write English or his native tongue, or own property assessed at $300 or more; but any citizen who was a voter on January I, 1867, or his son or his grandson, or any person naturalized prior to January 1, 1898, if applying for registration before September 1, 1898, might vote, notwithstanding both illiteracy and poverty. Separate registration lists were provided for whites and blacks, and a longer term of residence required in State, county, parish, and precinct before voting than by the constitution of 1879.
North Carolina adopted her suffrage amendment in 1900. It lengthened the term of residence before registration and enacted both educational qualification and prepayment of poll-tax, only exempting from this tax those entitled to vote January 1, 1867. In 1902 Virginia adopted an instrument with the “understanding” cause for use until 1904, hedging the suffrage after that date by a poll-tax. Application for registration must be in the applicant’s handwriting, written in the presence of the registrar.
White solidarity yielding with time, there were heard in the Carolinas, Alabama, and Louisiana, loud allegations, not always unfounded, that this side or that had availed itself of negro votes to make up a deficit or turned the enginery of vote suppression against its opponents’ white supporters.
Most States which overthrew negro suffrage seemed glad to think of the new regime as involving no perjury, fraud, violence, or lese-constitution. Some of Alabama’s spokesmen were of a different temper, paying scant heed to the federal questions involved. “The constitution of ’75,” they said, “recognized the Fifteenth Amendment, which Alabama never adopted, and guaranteed the negro all the rights of suffrage the white man enjoys. The new constitution omits that section. Under its suffrage provisions the white man will rule for all time in Alabama.”
The North, once ablaze with zeal for the civil and political rights of the southern negro, heard the march of this exultant southern crusade with equanimity, with indifference, almost with sympathy. Perfunctory efforts were made in Congress to secure investigation of negro disfranchisement, but they evoked feeble response.