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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 22. Political Practices Today - 3. The Negro Vote in the South
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Chapter 22. Political Practices Today 489
tors and vigorously prosecuted in federal courts.^® Although the unre-
stricted voting by Negroes in the A.A.A. referenda does not give them
any political power, it, nevertheless, may be of great significance. It accus-
toms whites to the presence of Negroes at polling places and perhaps
makes them think beyond the myth of black domination and consider the
real issues involved in Negro voting. It provides the South with an
example of elections based on significant issues and with less corruption
than usual. It also gives the Negro a chance to vote and perhaps to
discover the nature of the political process.
Southerners will often explain that Negroes can vote in the South but
that they just do not care to.^*^ This is, of course, a rationalization justifying
white policy. It is hard to conceive that any Southern politician, well
acquainted with the facts, believes it. A few considerations, most of which
have already been made, may clarify the situation. A Negro in the South
expecting to vote knows that he is up to something extraordinary. In
order to register and to appear at the polls, he will have to leave the
protective anonymity of being just another Negro. He will become a
specific Negro who is ^^out of his place,” trying to attack the caste barriers.*^^
He knows further that the primary—^which is the main election in the
South—is closed to Negroes by formal and express rule in the major part
of the South. There is a whole barrage of formal devices to keep him
from voting in other elections—ranging all the way from the poll tax,
which in some states is cumulative from the time the prospective voter is
21 years of age, and a receipt for which must be produced at every
election, to the explanation of a statement in the state constitution to the
“satisfaction” of the registrar. There is another barrage of informal
devices to keep Negroes from voting—ranging all the way from the
insults and threats presented to the prospective Negro voter as he enters
the polling place to the violence administered to his person and property
by the Klan. If he should succeed in voting it is likely to be in an election
which has been decided long before and, formerly, for a lily-white Repub-
lican candidate who openly snubs him.
Another most potent force in keeping the Negro from the polls is his
own fear of what might happen to him, his job, his family, or his property,
in the present or in the future, if he should vote. The Southern Negro
often does not know how far he can go, and in such a situation he may
take the path of discretion. Some Negroes invoke the law to gain the
votej others stop when it is simply denied them and thereby lose their
vote. It is no test of the franchise that some Negroes are permitted to vote
in a given community, for what is permitted to a few would never be
permitted to the many. The much greater participation of Negroes in the
elections in the Northern and Border states and in some cities in the South
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