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An American Dilemma
1318
already on the law books of some Southern states. The task was now to build them into
a unified and efficient system.
The educated upper classes in the South faced a dilemma. On the one hand, it must
have seemed to be both advisable on general grounds and constitutionally more correct
to allow these clauses to disfranchise also the poor white people in the South. It is obvious
that, in addition, such a course also favored the political interests of those classes to
keep the political power firmly in their own hands. On the other hand, the white
supremacy doctrine asserted a principle of democracy among all white people and
established a gulf between them and all Negroes. More important was the fact that the
lower classes had tasted political power and were most suspicious of anything that might
disfranchise them; their suspicion had only been accentuated during the agrarian revolt.
The question of disfranchising the Negroes was, for this reason and in spite of the
great unanimity in the main purpose, the cause of heated campaigns. The debates in
the constitutional assemblies were long and extremely controversial. Indeed, the con-
troversy has lasted until this day; it now concerns principally the poll tax. In principle
the upper classes had to give up; the compromises reached were everywhere openly
announced as aiming at disfranchising the largest possible number of Negroes without
depriving any white man of his vote. Devices such as permanent registration, the
“grandfather clause,’’ or the exception of war veterans were intentionally framed in
order to enable all the white voters to evade the force of the clauses aimed at disfran-
chising the Negroes; in addition, a sufficient discretionary power was reserved for the
registrars to give effect to the promise of a “right-minded” administration of the
election statutes. The upper classes felt a certain satisfaction in the reflection that some
of the corrective devices were bound to have decreasing importance as time passed. In
practice, particularly the poll tax requirement has turned out to be a barrier to great
masses of lower class white people.
The dilemma of the “best people” in the upper strata and their interpretation of the
result is interestingly revealed by Edgar G. Murphy, who himself had taken an active
part in the struggle about the new constitution (1901) in his home state, Alabama, and
who is distinguished as one of the most sincere friends of the Negro among the conserv-
ative-minded old Southerners and the author of two books on the Negro problem. In
Problems of the Present South (1909; first edition, 1904) he writes:
“Had the negro masses presented the only illiterate elements, that method (namely
to require literacy for voting) might have been pursued. But there were two defective
classes—the unqualified negroes of voting age and the unqualified white men. Both
could not be dropped at once. A working constitution is not an a priori theoretic crea-
tion; it must pass the people. The unqualified white men of voting age might be first
included in the partnership of reorganization. Such a decision was a political necessity.
. . . Moreover ... no amended Constitution, no suffrage reform, no legal status for a
saner and purer political administration, was possible without their votes. , , .
“Terms were given them. Under skillfully drawn provisions the mass of illiterate
negro voters were deprived of suflfrage and the then voting white population—^with
certain variously defined exceptions—was permitted to retain the ballot. Care was
taken, however, that all the rising generation and all future generations of white workers
should be constrained to accept the suffrage test, a test applicable, therefore, after a
brief fixed period, to white and black alike. Such is the law.”*
*Pp. 192-193; italics ours.
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