To have such a grievance as to be legally enfranchised and yet physically denied the use of the vote is, of course, great harm. It affects the social mind. It makes bitterness and brews agitation. To be conscripted and called upon to fight for the country when this grievance is in mind has aggravated the harm already done. “We are not too low to fight the foe, but we’re too low to share in the spoil,” as the story goes. I heard a Negro comedian indulging in funniosities at a colored music hall win great applause by a chansonette:
Cullud folk will be ready to fight
When cullud folk has equal right.
I a’nt so foolish as I seem to be.
And it is a reasonable sentiment.
The fact is, Negrodom has to a great extent qualified to vote. Half the population is sunk in economic bondage and illiteracy, but the other half has more than average capacity for citizenship. Yet in spite of the Constitution and the Federal authority these many millions remain practically without voice in all the Southern States. Physical force is exerted to keep them from the ballot box.
The Southerner affects to believe that the educated Negro is even less fitted to have a vote than the illiterate sort. But that is because he hates to see the Negro rise. He will tell you that in certain States the Negroes outnumber the Whites by ten to one. But that is a characteristic misstatement. It is hard to find a city where the black vote exceeds the white. In the last census the blackest cities were Birmingham and Memphis, where the Negroes proved to be forty per cent. of the population, while in
| Richmond it was | 37% |
| Atlanta | 34% |
| Nashville | 34% |
| Washington | 29% |
| New Orleans | 27% |
And there are only two States where the Negro population exceeds that of the White; namely, Mississippi and South Carolina, where the Negroes were 57 per cent. and 55 per cent. of the total population.
If, as seems only fair, an illiteracy test were made legal by amendment of the Constitution, white voters would outnumber black by a large margin.
As for having anything to fear from the educated Negro vote, there is of course one matter of anxiety. The Negro would be bound to fight for social justice, and violence would be done to racial prejudice.
The South is, however, determined that the Negro shall never vote again. Year by year the colored people as a whole grow in intelligence, in capacity, and in the number of its intelligentsia, but the South is not moved. It sees no explosion in the future, and makes no provision for one—will not, till the explosion comes.