Taking up this side of the problem we shall discover two entirely distinct difficulties:—
First, we shall find many Negroes, and indeed hundreds of thousands of white men as well, who might vote, but who, through ignorance, or inability or unwillingness to pay the poll-taxes, or from mere lack of interest, disfranchise themselves.
The second difficulty is peculiar to the Negro. It consists in open or concealed intimidation on the part of the white men who control the election machinery. In many places in the South to-day no Negro, how well qualified, would dare to present himself for registration; when he does, he is rejected for some trivial or illegal reason.
Thus we have to meet a vast amount of apathy and ignorance and poverty on the one hand, and the threat of intimidation on the other.
First of all, for it is the chief injustice as between white and colored men with which we have to deal,—an injustice which the law already makes illegal and punishable,—how shall we meet the matter of intimidation? As I have already said, the door of the suffrage is everywhere legally open to the Negro, but a certain sort of Southerner bars the passage-way. He stands there and, law or no law, keeps out many Negroes who might vote; and he represents in most parts of the South the prevailing public opinion.
Shall we meet this situation by force? What force is available? Shall the North go down and fight the South? You and I know that the North to-day has no feeling but friendship for the South. More than that—and I say it with all seriousness, because it represents what I have heard wherever I have gone in the North to make inquiries regarding the Negro problem—the North, wrongly or rightly, is to-day more than half convinced that the South is right in imposing some measure of limitation upon the franchise. There is now, in short, no disposition anywhere in the North to interfere in internal affairs in the South—not even with the force of public opinion.
What other force, then, is to be invoked? Shall the Negro revolt? Shall he migrate? Shall he prosecute his case in the courts? The very asking of these questions suggests the inevitable reply.
We might as well, here and now, dismiss the idea of force, express or implied. There are times of last resort which call for force; but this is not such a time.
What other alternatives are there?
Accepting the laws as they are, then, there are two methods of procedure, neither sensational nor exciting. I have no quick cure to suggest, but only old and tried methods of commonplace growth.