Nelse approached the polls attempting to cast a vote against the Rev. Ezra Perkins the poll holder. A crowd of infuriated negroes surrounded him in a moment.
“Kill ’im! Knock ’im in the head! De black debbil, votin’ agin his colour!”
Nelse threw his big fists right and left and soon had an open space in the edge of which lay a half dozen negroes scrambling to get to their feet.
The negroes formed a line in front of him and the foremost one said, “You try ter put dat vote in de box we bust yo head open!”
Nelse knocked him down before he got the words well out of him mouth. “Honey, I’se er bad nigger!” he shouted with a grin as he stepped back and started to rush the line.
Perkins ordered the guard to arrest him.
As the guard carried Nelse away a crowd of angry negroes followed grinning and cursing.
“We lay fur you yit, ole hoss!” was their parting word as he disappeared through the jail door.
That night at the supper table in the hotel at Ham-bright an informal census of the voters was taken. There were present at the table a distinguished ex-judge, two lawyers, a General, two clergymen, a merchant, a farmer, and two mechanics. The only man of all allowed to vote that day was the negro who waited on the table.
Thus began the era of a corrupt and degraded ballot in the South that was to bring forth sorrow for generations yet unborn. The intelligence, culture, wealth, social prestige, brains, conscience and the historic institutions of a great state had been thrust under the hoof of ignorance and vice.