Negroes Disfranchised.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 31, 1912:
South's Test of Intelligence Too Much for Majority.
    In "The Afro-American Book of Facts and Figures," which has been freely distributed by the Republican National Committee, it is told that "the potential voting strength of the negroes in the United States, counting all of the males 21 years of age, is 2,459,422, or 9.1 percent. of the total potential voting strength of the United States. It is further stated that "many of these voters in the Southern Democratic States are practically disfranchised and debarred from voting." This is true in very large measure, and there is a very good reason for it.

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    In all the States all elections are held by ballot. The size of the ballot, the sort of paper on which it must be printed, the party emblems to be employed, how the names of the candidates shall be printed, are all prescribed by statute. In Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, the Australian ballot law has been adopted, with such modifications as have been deemed desirable in the interest of fair elections. In Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina the method of voting is different from the Australian plan. In these States the form of ballot, the rules for marking the ballots and the procedures by which the names of candidates are placed on the ballots are all prescribed by law. In the interest of fair elections the act of voting has been made difficult with the object, ostensibly, of compelling an intelligent exercise of the franchise. Really the Southern States have felt the necessity of adopting very stringent electoral provisions as a bar to the exercise of the voting privilege by the immense mass of potential negro voters living in that part of the country, to meet the war amendments to the Constitution touching the suffrage by such methods as have been possible under the law. By constitutional authority and legislative enactment the negro vote has been eliminated, practically, as a source of danger to good government. There are comparatively few colored voters in the South, notwithstanding the numerical strength of the race. The law prescribes the qualifications of all voters, without regard to race, color, or previous condition; but the conditions are so hard that few colored voters can meet the tests required of them and, technicality at least required of all men.

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    According to the census of 1910 there are 2,459,327 negroes of voting age in the United States, and of this number 213,923 live in Alabama, 111,385 in Arkansas, 89,659 in Florida, 266,814 in Georgia, 174,211 in Louisiana, 146,752 in North Carolina, 160,398 in South Carolina, 119,142 in Tennessee, 166,398 in Texas, and 159,593 in Virginia. This gives what is euphemistically called a "potential" negro voting strength in the ten Southern States named of 1,616,255. At the election in 1908 the vote for President was as follows in these States:

    Alabama— Democratic, 74,374; Republican, 25,305.
    Arkansas— Democratic, 87,015; Republican, 56,760.
    Florida— Democratic, 31,104; Republican, 10,654.
    Georgia— Democratic, 72,413; Republican, 41,602.
    Louisiana— Democratic, 63,568; Republican, 8,958.
    Mississippi—Democratic, 60,287; Republican, 4,363.
    North Carolina—Democratic 138,995; Republican, 114,937.
    South Carolina— Democratic, 62,283; Republican, 3,463.
    Tennessee—Democratic, 135,003; Republican, 118,324.
    Texas—Democratic, 217,302; Republican, 65,666.
    Virginia—Democratic, 82,046; Republi-can, 52573.

    In North Carolina and Tennessee there has always been a very considerable white population affiliated with the Republican Party, and in Alabama and Georgia, to which States there has been a large migration of Northern and Western people, the Republican Party has had something more than a mere local habitation and name. At the last Presidential election the total Republican vote in the Southern States noted aggregated 1,527,045, or 89,160 less than the total negro population in these Suites of voting age; yet it would be ridiculous to claim upon this basis that less than 100,000 negro voters in these States had been disfranchised.

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    The exact figures are not available, but it is fair to say that there are not in all those States more than 250,000 negroes of voting age who are qualified to vote. Their "potential strength"— and that is the very thing their white neighbors have feared and against which they have fortified themselves—is great; their actual voting strength is negligible. In South Carolina, for example, with its 169,308 negroes of voting age, it is not an underestimate to pay that there are not exceeding 20,000 who have complied with or who can comply with the very clear terms of Section 174 of the election law of the State requiring that "every male citizen of this State and of the United States, 21 years of age and upward * * * shall have paid six months before any election any poll tax then due and payable, and who can read and write any section of the said Constitution, (the State Constitution of 1895,) submitted to him by the registration officers, or can show that he owns and has paid all taxes collectible due the previous year on property in the State assessed at $300 or more and who shall apply for registration," shall be registered. No man can vote who has not been registered, and no man can be registered who does not possess either an educational or property qualification, the registration officers many of whom could not themselves construe the Constitution to save their necks —being the judges of the educational qualification of voters, and the tax-books determining the property requirement.

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    By such means as these the negro vote in the South has been cut to the bone. There is nothing in it to affright any longer the white people who live with it, so long as they preserve their solidarity: there is nothing in it that would justify the rest of the country in basing its calculations of the outcome of any partisan National election upon this shoal of shifting sand. The white folks are in the saddle down South, just as they are "up North," and there they expect to stay, whatever the exigencies of partisan and sectional politics in other parts of this blessed Union. They know why the negro was disfranchised, they have had bitter experience with his fitness for self-government, and by "the peaceable fruits of righteousness," that is to say, by keeping carefully within the cover of the Federal Constitution, they have provided by law for the undoing of the work of the sword. Down to this year, and this year also in point of fact, the Republicans have counted the negro for representation in their political conventions and the Democrats of the South have counted them for representation in Congress, so that there appears to have been a fair stand-off between the parties in respect of the negro in politics, with this difference in favor of the Democrats, that the Constitution provides population, not voters, as the basis of representation.

          J. C. H.