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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 20. Underlying Factors - 7. The Tradition of Illegality
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An American Dilemma
450
unless he proved by his actions that he was “good.”. . . Every Negro militia drill,
every meeting or convention for the political or social advancement of the Negro
took on the aspect of a “conspiracy” or an “insurrection.” The number of Negroes
killed during Reconstruction will never be known. Five thousand would probably be
a conservative estimate.®®
After the overthrow of the Reconstruction government in all Southern
states, which was consummated by 1877, a tendency to abstain from
violence and threats of violence as a means of keeping the Negroes away
from the polls gradually developed. With the state governments safely in
their hands, the dominant white Southerners found it easier to buy, steal,
or fail to count the Negro vote or to block the Negroes^ voting by intricate
election laws and manipulation of the election machinery.
Polling places were set up at points remote from colored communities. Ferries
between the black districts and voting booths went “out of repair” on election day.
Grim-visaged white men carrying arms sauntered through the streets or stood near
the polling booths. In districts where the blacks greatly outnumbered the whites,
election officials permitted members of the superior race to “stuff the ballot box,”
and manipulated the count without fear of censure. Fantastic gerrymanders were
devised to nullify Negro strength. The payment of poll taxes, striking at the Negro’s
poverty and carelessness in preserving receipts, was made a requirement for voting.
Some states confused the ignorant by enacting multiple ballot box laws which
required the voter to place correctly his votes for various candidates in eight or more
separate boxes. The bolder members of the colored race met threats of violence, and,
in a diminishing number of instances, physical punishment. When the black man
succeeded in passing through this maze of restrictions and cast his vote there was no
assurance that it would be counted. Highly centralized election codes vested arbitrary
powers in the election boards, and these powers were used to complete the elimina-
tion of the Negro vote.®®
The pattern of illegality was thus firmly entrenched in Southern politics
and public morals. ^^A strong man struggling upward under the conscious-
ness of submergence and suffocation strikes right and left with little thought
of either principle or policy explains an upright Southerner. So, un-
doubtedly, did the white South feel when justifying the means to the end.
But the means became a permanent pattern in the region.
This fatal tradition of illegality has even deeper historical roots. The
vigilante conservatives of the ’seventies did not create the patterns anew
but simply took over and perfected the methods utilized by the Recon-
struction governments themselves in their efforts to remain in power. These
governments had often gerrymandered districts in order to gain the full
weight of the Negro vote. They had created highly centralized election
machinery, which later became so handy to the conservatives, and they
had utilized unscrupulously this machinery and the Negro militia for
controlling elections. Often these elections were tainted with fraud, intimi-
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