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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 22. Political Practices Today - 1. The Southern Political Scene - 2. Southern Techniques for Disfranchising the Negroes
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Chapter 22. Political Practices Today 479
this.* Because there has been no Republican President since Hoover, it can-
not be determined whether a national Republican victory would give South-
ern Negroes a share of the spoils. It should be observed that the lily-white
movement is not completely anti-Negro: lily-white leaders want Negro
votes but do not want to recognize Negro influence or claims. In some
states, as in Louisiana, Negro Republican registrants are needed in order to
continue the party’s legal recognition and keep its place on the ballot. The
rule adopted at the 1940 Convention requiring a congressional district to
have 1,000 votes to secure representation may also lead to a courting of
Negro Republican votes in the South.
In another sense, the lily-white movement has been a failure: it has led
to no mass defection of whites from the Democratic party The movement
is up against the potent myth that, if the whites split, the Negroes will
hold the “balance of power” and dominate Southern politics. With the
declining proportion of Negroes in the South, and with the recent split
in the Negro vote, this myth has even less foundation than formerly. It
was a matter of honor for Southern Negroes to be Republican before
1930.^^ Many Negroes in the South feel that the old rump Republican party
never did any good for the Negroes but merely gave jobs to a few of their
political leaders. They felt hurt by the Republican party’s defection when it
went lily-white. It cannot, of course, be proven, but it seems likely that
there has been a landslide away from the Republican party in the South as
well as in the North.^® Still, many Negroes are shrewd enough to cal-
culate that if the lily-white movement should be successful, there could
develop a two-party system in the South, which would give the Negro a
chance to become a voter again.
2. Southern Techniques for Disfranchising the Negroes
In discussing techniques for restricting the franchise, the usual pro-
cedure has been to list the relevant laws and to describe their administra-
tion. While there is nothing incorrect about this procedure, it tends to give
a disjointed picture of the situation. Actually, each voting qualification has
been made or is enforced according to the basic principles underlying peo-
ple’s conceptions as to who should be allowed to vote. Three principles
seem to govern the extension of the franchise to Negroes in the South.
In the first place, there is the Constitution of the United States which
stipulates:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude.
* It is not only the lily-white movement, of course, which has brought the Negro to the
Democratic party. More important were the New Deal reforms and local conditions. (See
Section 4 of this chapter.)
**
Except in the unusual 1928 election.
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