Only one of many similar illustrations can be given of the administration of this law.
In the postoffice at Montgomery there are about eight or ten Colored clerks and carriers, all of them qualified under the United States Civil Service, who own their homes, each valued at upwards of a thousand dollars. Not one of these men, however, has been able to satisfy the board of registrars in Montgomery county of his good character, his ability to read or write, or that he was assessed with three hundred dollars’ worth of property. The Constitution thus administered has brought about the following results:
In the county of Montgomery, where there are more than 5000 qualified Negro electors, only 47 were allowed to register. And in the whole State of Alabama, with about two hundred thousand qualified Negro electors, only about two thousand five hundred were allowed to register; while all the white men in the state who applied—183,234—were given certificates of qualification for life.
Mr. Knox is also in error when he says that the Negroes of Alabama disqualify themselves by failing to pay their capitation tax, which is a prerequisite for voting.
The payment of the poll tax without also being registered does not give the right to vote in Alabama; and the payment of this tax is not a prerequisite for registration. The truth is, the boards of registrars refuse to register qualified Negroes, no matter what their qualification, or what property they own, or what taxes they have paid, except in such cases as seem to suit their whims. The qualified Negro thus refused is wholly remediless.
The Alabama Constitution provides that any person to whom registration is denied shall have the right of appeal to the Circuit Court. At the trial the solicitor for the state shall appear and defend against the petitioner on behalf of the state. The judge shall charge the jury only as to what constitutes the qualifications to entitle the applicant to become an elector at the time he applied for registration, and the jury shall determine the weight and effect of the evidence and return a verdict. From the judgment rendered an appeal lies to the Supreme Court in favor of the petitioner.
This law, we submit, is an absolute farce. It provides for an appeal from a partisan board to a partisan jury, composed exclusively of white men with the state solicitor, a partisan officer, appearing for the state against the elector. The hands of the trial judge are tied, so that he can only charge the jury as to what constitutes qualifications. The jury are thus made the sole judges of the case, and their decision is final, because nothing but an issue of fact can arise at the trial. Every lawyer knows that an appellate court cannot disturb the verdict of a jury on any disputed issue of fact, and hence on appeal to the Supreme Court the appeal was dismissed, the Court would avail nothing.
The case of the state vs. Crenshaw, 138 Alabama, 506, from Limestone county, referred to by Mr. Knox, in no way supports his contention, and really decides nothing. It has been ascertained that this case was specially made up to induce Negroes to abandon the Federal Courts and seek the State Courts. As arranged, the jury in the Circuit Court reversed the registrars, but on appeal to the Supreme Court the appeal was dismissed, the Court holding that the Constitution gave the right of appeal only to the person refused registration and not to the registrars.
The deception becomes obvious when we consider how utterly impossible it would be for the courts of Alabama, as at present constituted, to carry on their regular business and determine the cases of two hundred thousand qualified Negroes refused registration.