The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

Besides these, paupers and persons non compos mentis are generally excluded. These provisions are general.

Arkansas, however, excludes from the right to the suffrage those who have failed to pay the poll-tax. California excludes everyone unable to read the Constitution in English and to write his name. Connecticut requires for citizenship that a man shall be a citizen of the United States who can read the English language. Delaware requires the payment of a registration fee of $1; Georgia requires the payment of all taxes since 1877. Louisiana admits only those able to read and write, or who own $300 worth of property assessed in their names, or whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867. (This last is the celebrated “Squaw Clause.”) Massachusetts admits only those who can read and write. Mississippi admits only those who can read or understand the Constitution when read to them. Missouri requires voters to have paid their poll-taxes for the current year. Pennsylvania requires a voter, if twenty-two years of age or more, to have paid taxes within two years. South Carolina requires that a voter shall have paid six months prior to the election any poll-taxes then due, and shall be able to read and write any section of the State Constitution, or to show that he owns and has paid the previous year all taxes on property in the State assessed at $300 or more.

Tennessee requires that a voter shall have paid his poll-tax for the preceding year. Vermont excludes from the suffrage “those who have not obtained the approbation of the local board of civil authority.”

Virginia’s qualification for registration is as follows, until 1904: “First, a person who, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, served in time of war in the army or navy of the United States or the Confederate States, or of any State of the United States or of the Confederate States; or, second, a son of any such person; or, third, a person who owns property upon which, in the year next preceding that in which he offers to register, State taxes aggregating at least $1 have been paid; or, fourth, a person able to read any section of the Constitution submitted to him by the officers of registration, and to give a reasonable explanation of the same, or if unable to read such section, able to understand and give a reasonable explanation thereof when read to him by the officers.” Those registering prior to 1904 form a permanent roll. After 1904 the soldier’s-son clause and the understanding clause are done away with, and a poll-tax must be paid.

Thus, it will be seen that Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee require the prepayment of a poll-tax, while Delaware requires the payment of a registration fee of $1; that Georgia and Pennsylvania require the prepayment of taxes, while South Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia require the payment of taxes in the alternative, another alternative being that the voter must, in South Carolina and Louisiana, as in California, be able to read and write, while in Virginia, as in Mississippi, he is required only to be able to read or understand the Constitution when read to him, though in Virginia this last requirement was only for two years; and after two years the voter must be able to read and write.

Louisiana excepts those whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, and Virginia excepts until 1904 those who were soldiers or seamen or whose fathers served as soldiers or seamen in time of war.

Vermont, on the other hand, has the singular requirement that the voter must “obtain the approbation of the local board of civil authority”—a requirement which would seem to place the qualification wholly at the mercy of the party in power.

Though the representation in Congress of the Southern States would appear at present to be greater than the recorded vote of those States would entitle them to, the inequality is by no means so real as it appears, and is not greater than that which exists between some of the Eastern and Western States.[55]

It has been well shown by the same distinguished member of the New York Bar already quoted that “the disparity between the Southern States where the ignorant Negro vote has been practically eliminated and the Eastern States, though glaring, is less than that between the Eastern States and some of the Western States. For example, “Rhode Island’s vote is 1.59 times as great as Alabama’s, but South Dakota’s is 3.39 as great as that of Rhode Island. Vermont’s is 2.22 times as great as Florida’s, but Utah’s is 3.01 as great as Vermont’s. Maine’s is 2.36 as great as Georgia’s, but Colorado’s is 3.48 times as great as Maine’s.”[56]

The figures cited fail to give the strength of the Southern vote. The small vote in the Southern States is due partly to the fact that the ascendancy of one political party is so great that voters do not feel it necessary to attend the polls.