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Footnotes 1333
permanently better itself without political power. It may be a question, It certainly
is a question, as to just how labor is going to use this power ultimately so as to raise Its
economic and social status. But there is no question but that such power must be had.”*
^^See, for instance, Booker T. Washington, Thd Future of the American Negro
(1899), pp. 141, 156 and 212.
13
“The more I consider the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that the most
harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain sections of the South have
felt themselves compelled to resort, in order to get rid of the force of the Negroes’
ballot, is not wholly in the wrong done to the Negro, but in the permanent Injury to
the morals of the white man. The wrong to the Negro is temporary, but to the morals
of the white man the injury is permanent. I have noted time and time again that when
an individual perjures himself in order to break the force of the black man’s ballot,
he soon learns to practise dishonesty in other relations of life, not only where the Negro
is concerned, but equally so where a white man is concerned. The white man who
begins by cheating a Negro usually ends up cheating a white man. The white man who
begins to break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch
a white man. All this, it seems to me, makes it important that the whole Nation lend
a hand in trying to lift the burden of ignorance from the South.”*’
“These disfranchisement measures, harsh and severe as they are in many features,
meet with little or no opposition from the nation at large. Although the clear and
unmistakable intent of the Federal Constitution is set at naught, yet the nation suffereth
it to be so. There is no moral force in the nation at present that will lead to their
undoing, and no political exigency seems to demand it. That they violate the spirit, if
not the letter, of the Federal Constitution is notorious. Every fourteen year old child
in America is fully aware of this fact, and yet the nation winks at the violation of its
own fundamental law. Men of the highest patriotic and personal probity ignore their
oath to execute the law, and condone its annulment. If there is a growing disrespect
for law in the attitude of the American mind, the cause is not far to seek nor hard to
find. If one portion of the organic law may be violated with impunity, why not another
if it seems to conflict with our interests or with pur prejudices?”®
“I am not saying a word against all legitimate efforts to purge the ballot of igno-
rance, pauperism, and crime. But few have pretended that the present movement for
disfranchisement in the South is for such a purpose; it has been plainly and frankly
declared in nearly every case that the object of the disfranchising laws is the elimination
of the black man from politics.”^
“More and more I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our
race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing
upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without oppor-
tunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. Any other course my daily
observation in the South convinces me, will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the
white man, and unfair to the rest of the states in the Union, and will be, like slavery,
a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for.”®
* Ibid., pp. 454-455.
**
Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (190X; first edition, 1900), pp. 155-1 55.
* Kelly Miller, Out of the House of Bondage (1914), p. 130.
*W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), p. 175.
•Washington, Uf from Slavery, 86-87^
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