“The ability to live and thrive under adverse circumstances is the surest guarantee of the future. The race which at the last shall inherit the earth will be the race which remains longest upon it. The Negro was here before the Anglo-Saxon was evolved, and his thick lips and heavy-lidded eyes looked out from the inscrutable Sphynx cross the sands of Egypt while yet the ancestors of those who now oppress him were living in caves, practicing human sacrifices, and painting themselves with woad—and the Negro is here yet.”—Charles W. Chesnutt.
Fortune is often too kind and generous to the mentally, morally delinquent and too often covers the path of the undeserving with flowers, while real merit and genius is allowed to starve and die.
The Disfranchisement of the Negro
BY WILFRED H. SMITH
From the Outlook
As an American Negro I feel compelled to take issue with the Hon. John B. Knox of Alabama, in his article in The Outlook of January 21, on the “Reduction of Southern Representation,” and challenge his statement that the recent Constitution of Alabama does not disfranchise the Negro as such, but only prescribes an educational and property qualification test for both races; and his further statement that in case a Negro is discriminated against by the registrars, an appeal to the courts of Alabama will not be in vain.
On the contrary, the fact is that the suffrage provisions of the new Constitution of Alabama are an open disavowal and nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, and an exclusion of the Negro from the electorate on account of his race and previous condition; also the law providing for an appeal to the courts of the State of Alabama, where a Negro is refused registration, is only a snare, and affords him no relief whatever.
In considering this question the following undeniable facts should be borne in mind:
1. The Twelfth Census of the United States shows the population of the State of Alabama to be 1,001,152 whites and 827,545 Colored; and in 20 counties the Negroes largely outnumber the whites.