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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 23. Trends and Possibilities - 3. Negro Suffrage in the South as an Issue
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Chapter 23. Trends and Possibilities 513
And Du Bois is also right when, without falling into the fallacy of believing
that the voting right would by itself work wonders, he insists on the vote
as a key point in all efforts to raise Negro standards. There is, indeed, a
strange atmosphere of unreality around much of the discussion of the
practical aspects of the Negro problem in America: it is commonly and more
or less explicitly assumed that it is possible to raise materially and per-
manently the condition of living in various respects for the Southern Negro
people through Southern white good-will and Northern philanthropy
while . . Negroes were to have no voice in the selection of local officials,
no control of their own taxation, no vote on expenditure. . . The
Negroes’ interests in politics are primarily concerned with the handling of
local matters. Negroes need, in order to protect themselves, a voice in
deciding who will be the judges of the courts, the public attorneys, the
sheriffs and the chiefs of police, the members of the school board and other
agencies deciding upon their share of public services. As national politics
is Increasingly important for all questions of social and economic welfare,
they are also interested in who represents their districts in Congress.
On the point of suffrage, as in so many other respects, there has, in
frincifle, never really been any great difference of opinion among Negro
leaders. It is true that Booker T. Washington found it advisable as a more
practical tactic to proceed carefully and to stress that there were many
things more important for the Negro’s welfare than the vote.* But he
never gave up the demand for the Negro’s right to the vote, nor his expec-
tation that ultimately the South would reach a stage where Negroes were
allowed to vote.’* The Negro leaders have pointed to the moral danger to
all society of the resort to extra-legal measures for keeping the Negroes out
of politics.’® The Negro leaders are also at one in not demanding an
absolutely unqualified right to suffrage. They only insist that the restrictions
of suffrage should be applied impartially to whites and Negroes alike.’’*
White liberals in the South are increasingly taking the same position.’®
But the great majority of conservative Southern white people try to appear
unconcerned.
While, with a few local and regional exceptions, the Southern Negroes
remain disfranchised, we have noted the beginning of a tendency to
increased political participation. In many Southern cities, the present writer
has observed how small organizations and civic groups among the Negroes
are starting and are attempting to get more Negroes on the registration
lists. But first, this is not an entirely new phenomenon and, second, the
immediate success is in most cases insignificant. Most Southern Negroes
seem to keep their minds turned away from the whole matter. As we have
shown, they have, indeed, good reasons for lack of political interest. But
* See Chapter 34.
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