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“On and after the first day of January, 1892, every elector in addition to the foregoing qualifications, shall be able to read any section of the constitution of this state; or shall be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof.”

This section contains the so-called educational test, and the elector’s qualifications under it are determined by a registration officer whose discretion is as limitless as his prejudices. The registration officers of South Carolina acting under a similar provision of the constitution of that state required the Negroes who offered themselves for registration to understand and explain section 4 of article 5 of the constitution of South Carolina, which is as follows:

Fearing apparently that these provisions of the constitution might not prove a sufficient barrier to the Negro’s intellect and cunning, the legislature of Mississippi has gone the full length of the power granted it, in its efforts to keep the Negro from voting. Section 3643 of the code of 1892 of that state, which regulates the appointment of managers of elections, contains this remarkably clever provision:

Imagine commissioners of election of the Mississippi type regarding a Negro, or a white man known to be favorable to Negro suffrage, as a “suitable person!”

One would suppose that the elector having successfully passed the ordeal of the registration officer would be allowed smooth sailing during the remainder of the voyage to the polls. But no; having passed Scylla, he must encounter Charybdis at the very brink of the ballot box; for section 3644 of the above mentioned Code provides that any of the managers of election

The effect of the constitution of Mississippi is to set up a standard of qualification of a much higher intellectual scale than that of any of the most enlightened states in the Union and to deprive a hundred and eighty thousand citizens of the elective franchise previously enjoyed by them.

The attempt is often made by southern politicians of the dominant class to justify the Mississippi plan of disfranchisement by pointing to the fact that Massachusetts, a northern state, has provided for a qualified suffrage by the adoption of an educational test. But compared with the Mississippi provision that of Massachusetts is as modest and simple as the average Mississippi school house.

Amendment XX to the Massachusetts Constitution is as follows:

Thus Massachusetts requires that those wishing to exercise the elective franchise in the future must be able merely to read the English language; and expends annually more than four dollars per capita to educate them; while Mississippi requires, not only future electors, but those who have previously exercised the right to vote to give “a reasonable interpretation” to the satisfaction of a registration officer, and expends annually less than one dollar per capita for education!

Here it may be well to state that, although the idea of a qualified suffrage grew out of the desire and the necessity to prepare the foreign born element of our population, aliens to our institutions and language, for an intelligent exercise of the ballot, the Negro does not make objection or complaint to a just and fair educational test of his fitness to exercise the right of suffrage. Absolutely loyal to republical institutions, he is willing to go as far as any in the matter of fairly and justly protecting the ballot from abuses that grow out of ignorance.

The Constitution of Mississippi has served as the pattern for the disfranchising enactments of South Carolina and Louisiana. The main provision in the South Carolina Constitution regulating suffrage is as follows: