NOTE: This article and the next were contributed to the International Socialist Review in 1912 while the author was a member of the Socialist Party. He has since left it (but has joined no other party) partly because, holding as he does by the American doctrine of “Race First,” he wished to put himself in a position to wont among his people along lines of his own choosing.
Providence, according to Mr. Kipling, has been pleased to place upon the white man’s shoulders the tremendous burden of regulating the affairs of men of all other colors, who, for the purpose of his argument, are backward and undeveloped—“half devil and half child.” When one considers that of the sixteen hundred million people living upon this earth, more than twelve hundred million are colored, this seems a truly staggering burden.
But it does not seem to have occurred to the proponents of this pleasant doctrine that the shoe may be upon the other foot so far as the other twelve hundred million are concerned. It is easy to maintain an ex parte argument, and as long as we do not ask the other side to state their case our own arguments will appear not only convincing but conclusive. But in the court of common sense this method is not generally allowed, and a case is not considered closed until both parties have been heard from.
I have no doubt but that the colored peoples of the world will have a word or two to say in their own defense. In this article I propose to put the case of the black man in America, not by any elaborate arguments, but by the presentation of certain facts which will probably speak for themselves.
I am not speaking here of the evidences of Negro advancement, nor even making a plea for justice. I wish merely to draw attention to certain pitiful facts. This is all that is necessary—at present. For I believe that those facts will furnish such a damning indictment of the Negro’s American over-lord as must open the eyes of the world. The sum total of these facts and of what they suggest constitute a portion of the black man’s burden in America. Not all of it, to be sure, but quite enough to make one understand what the Negro problem is. For the sake of clarity I shall arrange them in four groups: political, economic, educational and social.
I—Political.
In a republic all the adult male natives are citizens. If in a given community some are citizens and others subjects, then your community is not a republic. It may call itself so. But that is another matter. Now, the essence of citizenship is the exercise of political rights; the right to a voice in government, to say what shall be done with your taxes, and the right to express your own needs. If you are denied these rights you are not a citizen. Well, in sixteen southern states there are over eight million Negroes in this anomalous position. Of course, many good people contend that they may be unfit to exercise the right of suffrage. If that is so, then who is fit to exercise it for them? This argument covers a fundamental fallacy in our prevailing conception of the function of the ballot. We think that it is a privilege to be conferred for “fitness.” But it isn’t. It is an instrument by which the people of a community express their will, their wants and their needs. And all those are entitled to use it who have wants, needs and desires that are worth consideration by society. If they are not worth considering, then be brutally frank about it; say so, and establish a protectorate over them. But have done with the silly cant of “fitness.” People vote to express their wants. Of course, they will make mistakes. They are not gods. But they have a right to make their own mistakes—the Negroes. All other Americans have. That is why they had Ruef in San Francisco, and still have Murphy in New York.
But the American republic says, in effect, that eight million Americans shall be political serfs. Now, this might be effected with decency by putting it into the national constitution. But it isn’t there. The national constitution has two provisions expressly penalizing this very thing. Yet the government—the President, Congress, the Supreme Court—wink at it. This is not what we call political decency. But, just the same, it is done. How is it done? By fraud and force. Tillman of South Carolina has told in the United States Senate how the ballot was taken from Negroes by shooting them—that is, by murder. But murder is not necessary now. In certain southern states in order to vote a man must have had a grandfather who voted before Negroes were freed. In others, he must be able to interpret and understand any clause in the Constitution, and a white registration official decides whether he does understand. And the colored men of states like Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana who meet such tests as those states provide are disfranchised by the “white primary” system. According to this system only those who vote at the primaries can vote at the general elections. But the South Carolina law provides that: “At this election only white voters … and such Negroes as voted the Democratic ticket in 1876 and have voted the Democratic ticket continuously since … may vote.” Of course, they know that none of them voted that ticket in 1876 or have done so continuously since. In Georgia the law says that: “All white electors who have duly registered … irrespective of past political affiliations are hereby declared qualified and are invited to participate in said primary election.”
Under the new suffrage law of Mr. Booker T. Washington’s state of Alabama. Montgomery county, which has 53,000 Negroes, disfranchises all but one hundred of them. In 1908 the Democrats of West Virginia declared in their platform that the United States Constitution should be so amended so as to disfranchise all the Negroes of the country. In December, 1910, the lower house of the Texas legislature, by a vote of 51 to 34, instructed its federal Senators and Congressmen to work for the repeal of the two amendments to the national constitution which confer the right of suffrage upon Negroes. But the funniest proposal in that direction came from Georgia, where J. J. Slade proposed an amendment to the state constitution to the effect that colored men should be allowed to vote only if two chaste white women would swear that they would trust them in the dark. But, however it has been effected, whether by force or fraud, by methods wise or otherwise, the great bulk of the Negroes of America are political pariahs to-day. When it is remembered that they once had the right of suffrage, that it was given them, not upon any principle of abstract right, but as a means of protection from the organized ill-will of their white neighbors, that that ill-will is now more effectively organized and in possession of all the powers of the state,—it can be seen at a glance that this spells subjection certain and complete.