Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 22. Political Practices Today - 2. Southern Techniques for Disfranchising the Negroes
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chapter 22. Political Practices Today 485
the law are seldom subjected to this constitutional test. Laws can disfran-
chise Negroes only by making a criterion for voting some characteristic
which is found more frequently in the Negro population than in the white
and by creating opportunities for local administrative discretion. Extra-
legal activities can disfranchise Negroes to any degree desired.®
Violence, terror, and intimidation have been, and still are, effectively
used to disfranchise Negroes In the South. Physical coercion is not so often
practiced against the Negro, but the mere fact that It can be used with
impunity and that it Is devastating in its consequences creates a psychic
coercion that exists nearly everywhere In the South. A Negro can seldom
claim the protection of the police and the courts if a white man knocks
him down, or if a mob burns his house or inflicts bodily injuries on him or
on members of his family. If he defends himself against a minor violence,
he may expect a major violence. If he once ^^gets In wrong” he may expect
the loss of his job or other economic Injury, and constant insult and loss
of whatever legal rights he may have had.®® In such circumstances It is
no wonder that the great majority of Negroes in the South make no
attempt to vote and—if they make attempts which are rebuffed—seldom
demand their full rights under the federal Constitution.
Usually a Negro never goes so far as to attempt to cast his vote. In the
majority of Southern localities Negroes are prevented from registering,
or only a few Negroes are allowed to register. This means that the rebuffs
occur in the administration of the legal requirements for registration.®^
Educational ^‘tests” to disfranchise Negroes are widely used in a bluntly
illegal way. One Intelligent Negro woman in North Carolina was denied
registration when she mispronounced the words “contingency” and “con-
stitutionality” in reading the state constitution.®® Other rebuffs come as a
still more unmistakable extension of the law. A Negro school teacher in
the same state was denied registration* after the following incident:
. . . the registrar asked me to read a section of the Constitution, which I did, and
then asked me to define terms which 1 knew was not part of the North Carolina
law. I said to him, “That is not a part of the law, to define terms.” He said, “You
must satisfy me, and don’t argue with me.”®®
Many cases are reported where Negroes do not get even this far: “What
do you want here, nigger?” has been enough to send them away from the
registration or polling place.®^ Other favorite devices are to evade the pros-
pective Negro registrant or voter by ignoring him, by telling him that
registration cards have “run out,” or that all members of the registration
board are not present, that he should go somewhere else, or that he will
be notified when he can register, by “losing^^ his registration card or by
“forgetting” to put his name on the list of voters.®®
* For a general discussion of extra-legal devices to coerce Negroes, see Part VI.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
