Part 6 (1/2)
In recent years a certain section of the Republicans in the far Southern States have tried to free themselves of the reputation of being ”n.i.g.g.e.r lovers” by vying with their Democratic rivals in seeking to deprive Negroes of civic and political rights. Republicans of this particular stripe are known colloquially as the ”Lily Whites.” In this connection the following correspondence is of interest.
[_Copy_]
[_Personal_]
_White House,_ _Was.h.i.+ngton, March 21, 1904._
DEAR MR. WAs.h.i.+NGTON: By direction of the President I send you herewith for your private information a copy of letter from the President to Mr. ----, dated February 24, 1904.
Please return it to me when you have read it.
Yours very truly,
WM. LOEB, JR., Secretary to the President.
_Princ.i.p.al Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Inst.i.tute, Tuskegee, Alabama._
This was the letter enclosed:
[_Copy_]
[_Personal_]
_White House,_ _Was.h.i.+ngton, February 24, 1904._
MY DEAR MR. ----: I take it for granted that there is no intention of making the Louisiana delegation all white. I think it would be a mistake for my friends to take any such att.i.tude in any state where there is a considerable Negro population. I think it is a great mistake from the standpoint of the whites; and in an organization composed of men whom I have especially favored it would put me in a false light. As you know, I feel as strongly as any one can that there must be nothing like ”Negro domination.” On the other hand, I feel equally strongly that the Republicans must consistently favor those comparatively few colored people who by character and intelligence show themselves ent.i.tled to such favor. To put a premium upon the possession of such qualities among the blacks is not only to benefit them, but to benefit the whites among whom they live. I very earnestly hope that the Louisiana Republicans whom I have so consistently favored will not by any action of theirs tend to put me in a false position in such a matter as this. With your entire approval, I have appointed one or two colored men ent.i.tled by character and standing to go to the National Convention.
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
In the year 1898 the success of the suffrage amendments in South Carolina and Mississippi in excluding from the franchise more than nine-tenths of their Negro inhabitants inspired an agitation in Louisiana to cut off the Negro vote by similar means, and this agitation came to a head in the Const.i.tutional Convention of that year. Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton, a.s.sisted by T. Thomas Fortune, the well-known Negro editor, and Mr. Scott, his secretary, prepared an open letter addressed to this convention which was taken to the convention by Mr.
Scott and placed in the hands of the suffrage committee as well as the editors of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_ and the _Picayune_, the leading daily papers of the State. Extracts from the letter were sent out by the local representative of the a.s.sociated Press and widely published throughout the country. These New Orleans editors expressed to Mr. Scott their approval of the letter and their substantial agreement with its main features, and promised to publish it in full, which they not only did, but accompanied it by editorial reviews. This letter stated in part:
”The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of the South that restriction be put upon the ballot.... With the sincerest sympathy with you in your efforts to find a way out of the difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make a law that will provide an opportunity or temptation for an ignorant white man to vote and withhold the same opportunity from an ignorant colored man, without injuring both men.... Any law controlling the ballot, that is not absolutely just and fair to both races, will work more permanent injury to the whites than to the blacks.
”The Negro does not object to an educational or property test, but let the law be so clear that no one clothed with state authority will be tempted to perjure and degrade himself by putting one interpretation upon it for the white man and another for the black man. Study the history of the South, and you will find that where there has been the most dishonesty in the matter of voting, there you will find to-day the lowest moral condition of both races. First, there was the temptation to act wrongly with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an easy step to dishonesty with the white man's ballot, to the carrying of concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the murder of a white man and then to lynching. I entreat you not to pa.s.s such a law as will prove an eternal millstone about the neck of your children.”
Later in the same appeal he said: ”I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the ballot-box against the ignorant, that you open the schoolhouse.... Let the very best educational opportunities be provided for both races: and add to this the enactment of an election law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the same time providing that in proportion as the ignorant secure education, property, and character, they will be given the right of citizens.h.i.+p. Any other course will take from one half your citizens interest in the State, and hope and ambition to become intelligent producers and taxpayers--to become useful and virtuous citizens. Any other course will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death.”
The New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, in its editorial accompanying the publication of this letter, said: ”We have seen the corrupting influence in our politics and our elections of making fraud an element of our suffrage system. We are certainly not going to get away from fraud by encouraging it, or making it a part of the suffrage system we place in our new const.i.tution.” The same editorial further states that impartiality in the use of the ballot can be given Negro and white man not only ”with the utmost safety,” but ”it would have a beneficial effect upon the politics of the State.” In fact, the press of both North and South, both of the whites and the blacks, published this letter with practically unanimous editorial endors.e.m.e.nt, but in spite of all this the leaders of the convention remained obdurate, the immediate object was lost, and Louisiana followed the example of Mississippi and South Carolina. No one realized, however, better than Booker Was.h.i.+ngton that the effort was by no means in vain. Owing to the general awakening of intelligent public opinion the convention leaders were forced into the position of driving through the discriminatory amendment not only in the face of the condemnation of the better element throughout the country but even with the disapproval of the better and leading citizens of their own State.
Shortly afterward members of the Georgia Legislature, seeking political preferment for themselves through the familiar means of anti-Negro agitation, introduced a bill which aimed to discriminate against the Negroes of Georgia by legislative enactment just as the Negroes of Louisiana had been discriminated against by a const.i.tutional amendment. This time Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton went personally to Atlanta and appealed directly to a number of the members of the Legislature and to the editors of the leading papers in opposition to this bill. In an interview published in the Atlanta _Const.i.tution_ at the time he said:
”I cannot think that there is any large number of white people in the South who are so ignorant or so poor that they cannot get education and property enough to enable them to stand the test by the side of the Negro in these respects. I do not believe that these white people want it continually advertised to the world that some special law must be pa.s.sed by which they will seem to be given an unfair advantage over the Negro by reason of their ignorance or their poverty. It is unfair to blame the Negro for not preparing himself for citizens.h.i.+p by acquiring intelligence, and then when he does get education and property, to pa.s.s a law that can be so operated as to prevent him from being a citizen, even though he may be a large taxpayer. The Southern white people have reached the point where they can afford to be just and generous; where there will be nothing to hide and nothing to explain. It is an easy matter, requiring little thought, generosity or statesmans.h.i.+p to push a weak man down when he is struggling to get up.
Any one can do that. Greatness, generosity, statesmans.h.i.+p are shown in stimulating, encouraging every individual in the body politic to make of himself the most useful, intelligent, and patriotic citizen possible. Take from the Negro all incentive to make himself and his children useful property-holding citizens, and can any one blame him for becoming a beast capable of committing any crime?”
This time the immediate object was attained. The Atlanta _Const.i.tution_ and other leading Georgia papers indorsed Booker Was.h.i.+ngton's appeal and the Legislature voted down its anti-Negro members. Be it said to the credit of the Georgia Legislature that it has resisted several similar attempts to discriminate against the Negro citizens of the State, and it was not till 1908, ten years after the Louisiana law was pa.s.sed, that Georgia finally pa.s.sed a law disfranchising Negro voters.
Booker Was.h.i.+ngton has been accused of not protesting against the lynching of Negroes. In the article published in the _Century Magazine_ in 1912, from which we have previously quoted, he said on this subject: ”When he was Governor of Alabama, I heard Governor Jelks say in a public speech that he knew of five cases during his administration of innocent colored people having been lynched. If that many innocent people were known to the governor to have been lynched, it is safe to say that there were other innocent persons lynched whom the governor did not know about. What is true of Alabama in this respect is true of other states. In short, it is safe to say that a large proportion of the colored persons lynched are innocent.... Not a few cases have occurred where white people have blackened their faces and committed a crime, knowing that some Negro would be suspected and mobbed for it. In other cases it is known that where Negroes have committed crimes, innocent men have been lynched and the guilty ones have escaped and gone on committing more crimes.
”Within the last twelve months there have been seventy-one cases of lynching, nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged with the crime of rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored people do not feel that innocence offers them security against lynching. They do feel, however, that the lynching habit tends to give greater security to the criminal, white or black.”
Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton often pointed out how the lynching of blacks leads inevitably to the lynching of whites and how the lynching of guilty persons of either race inevitably leads to the lynching of innocent persons of both races.