proclaimed the era of sectional fraternity and with consummate cunning set forth in the next breath to eastern capitalists the industrial possibilities of the South. Gradually they reached the climax of their mission, to wit: Leave the Negro to us: we are his friends, his natural guardians: we know him better than you do, and can more wisely fix his status in our social scheme. Then the old, old story was repeated with endless refrain, of the Negro’s ignorance, criminal tendencies (fully attested by timely news dispatches from the South), of his inferiority, and of the menace he is to Anglo-Saxon domination.

Thus while the sons of slave masters were poisoning the minds of the north and west, the slave drivers were at home perfecting the conspiracy against Negro citizenship.

The year 1890 witnessed the beginning of the execution of this conspiracy which promises to continue until the Negro is divested of every right which is worth the having. In 1890 a minority of the people of the state of Mississippi arrogated to themselves the right to despoil the majority of the citizens of that state of the rights of free men by nullifying the Fifteenth Amendment.

II

Before considering the new constitutions of the States of Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana, and the decisions of courts respecting them, I have deemed it proper to review the history of Negro Suffrage and to indicate the unvarying attitude of the ruling classes of the South towards it. In the light of this history, let us now briefly examine these recent enactments in their relation to the political rights of the Negro.

It is no secret that the avowed purpose of the framers of these instruments was to deprive the Negro of the right to vote. Their purpose is not more startling than is the defiance with which they have hurled it from the housetops. This purpose they claim to have accomplished by taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty of the Negro; but the most cursory glance at these enactments will convince any one that neither intelligence nor wealth constitutes the basis of electoral qualification under them, while the confessions of the framers of them as well as their operation proves that neither ignorance nor poverty serves to disqualify.

In Mississippi a Negro may be as rich as Dives and as wise as Solomon and yet he may not be able to satisfy an ignorant and partisan registration officer that he is qualified to be an elector; while a white man may be as poor as Lazarus and may not possess the intellectual outfit of a Hottentot and yet he will experience no difficulty in convincing the same individual that he is qualified to exercise all the rights and privileges of that class whose “destiny it is to dominate.” This is the sort of educational qualifications these great constitutional documents prescribe!

How to disfranchise the Negro by an educational test without at the same time disfranchising a very large number of white men, was at first a problem that presented many difficulties to the framers of the Mississippi document. Such a problem, however, cannot long remain a difficult one to men who are masters of the art of legalizing fraud.

That the illiterate white vote might not, by the play of accident, become eliminated by an educational test, it was provided that that part of the constitution which prescribes it, was not to go into operation until one year after the adoption of the constitution. Before the expiration of that time another standard of qualification was provided and all who qualified under it were not to be affected by the subsequent operation of the educational test.

This latter provision is as follows, being section 241 of Article 12 of the constitution of Mississippi, defining who are electors:

Under this section of the Mississippi constitution, the white population of that state qualified as electors. But to prevent the Negroes from qualifying, section 242 of Article 12, further provides that persons offering to register shall take the following oath:

In the foregoing provisions attention is called to the following:

(1) The crimes mentioned as disqualifying from voting are such as it is always easy, when desirable, to convict the Negro of committing. Under the present method of administering justice in the states where these disfranchising constitutions operate, the Negro has neither any guarantee of a fair and impartial trial nor any protection against malicious prosecution or false accusations when it is convenient to convict him.

(2) The penalty for not paying taxes almost a year before election day is a disqualification from voting. But this of course is not the sole penalty. Whether he is a qualified elector or not, every man must in the case of real property pay his taxes, or suffer the loss of his property, and certainly no man, not even the poorest of the Negroes and poor whites, can escape the obligation of the poll tax by a mere forfeiture of his right to vote.[11] Thus the penalty for not paying taxes is twofold in so far as the Negro is concerned. The poor white man may or may not experience any difficulty about producing “to the officer holding the election satisfactory evidence that he has paid his taxes.”

(3) The Negro who may desire to vote must answer under oath not certain specific interrogatories concerning his antecedents and former places of residence, but to “truly answer all questions propounded” to him, with the understanding that the slightest mistake will be construed as a corrupt and willful false statement exposing him to prosecution for perjury, thus rendering him everlastingly disqualified to vote.

When, under the foregoing provision the white male inhabitants of the state became qualified electors, the following provision, being section 244 of article 12 of the constitution of Mississippi, went into operation: