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NEGRO SUFFRAGE IN A DEMOCRACY 
by Ray Stannard Baker 
 
 
In this paper I endeavor to lay down the fundamental principles
which should govern the Negro franchise in a democracy, and to
outline a practical programme for the immediate treatment of the
problem. 
 
As I see it, the question of Negro suffrage in the United States
presents two distinct aspects:-- 
 
FIRST: the legal aspect. 
 
SECOND: the practical aspect. 
 
It will be admitted, I think, without argument, that all
governments do and of a necessity must exercise the right to limit
the number of people who are permitted to take part in the weighty
responsibilities of the suffrage.  Some governments allow only a
few men to vote; in an absolute monarchy there is only one voter;
other governments, as they become more democratic, permit a larger
proportion of the people to vote. 
 
Our own government is one of the freest in the world in the matter
of suffrage; and yet we bar out, in most states, all women; we bar
out Mongolians, no matter how intelligent; we bar out Indians, and
all foreigners who have not passed through a certain probationary
stage and have not acquired a certain small amount of education. 
We also declare--for an arbitrary limit must be placed somewhere-- 
that no person under twenty-one years of age may exercise the
right to vote, although some boys of eighteen are to-day better
equipped to pass intelligently upon public questions than many
grown men.  We even place adult white men on probation until they
have resided for a certain length of time, often as much as two
years, in the state or the town where they wish to cast their
ballots.  Our registration and ballot laws eliminate hundreds of
thousands of voters; and finally, we bar out everywhere the
defective and criminal classes of our population.  We do not
realize, sometimes, I think, how limited the franchise really is,
even in America.  We forget that out of nearly ninety million
people in the United States, fewer than fifteen million cast their
votes for President in 1908--or about one in every six. 
 
Thus the practice of a restricted suffrage is very deeply
implanted in our system of government.  It is everywhere
recognized that even in a democracy lines must be drawn, and that
the ballot, the precious instrument of government, must be hedged
about with stringent regulations.  The question is, where shall
these lines be drawn in order that the best interests, not of any
particular class, but of the whole nation, shall be served. 
 
Upon this question, we, as free citizens, have the absolute right
to agree or disagree with the present laws regulating suffrage;
and if we want more people brought in as partakers in government,
or some people who are already in, barred out, we have a right to
organize, to agitate, to do our best to change the laws.  Powerful
organizations of women are now agitating for the right to vote;
there is an organization which demands the suffrage for Chinese
and Japanese who wish to become citizens.  It is even conceivable
that a society might be founded to lower the suffrage age-limit
from twenty-one to nineteen years, thereby endowing a large number
of young men with the privileges, and therefore the educational
responsibilities, of political power.  On the other hand, a large
number of people, chiefly in our Southern States, earnestly
believe that the right of the Negro to vote should be curtailed,
or even abolished. 
 
Thus we disagree, and government is the resultant of all these
diverse views and forces.  No one can say dogmatically how far
democracy should go in distributing the enormously important
powers of active government.  Democracy is not a dogma; it is not
even a dogma of free suffrage.  Democracy is a life, a spirit, a
growth.  The primal necessity of any sort of government, democracy
or otherwise, whether it be more unjust or less unjust toward
special groups of its citizens, is to exist, to be a going
concern, to maintain upon the whole a stable and peaceful
administration of affairs.  If a democracy cannot provide such
stability, then the people go back to some form of oligarchy. 
Having secured a fair measure of stability, a democracy proceeds
with caution toward the extension of the suffrage to more and more
people--trying foreigners, trying women, trying Negroes. 
 
And no one can prophesy how far a democracy will ultimately go in
the matter of suffrage.  We know only the tendency.  We know that
in the beginning, even in America, the right to vote was a very
limited matter.  In the early years, in New England, only church- 
members voted; then the franchise was extended to include
property-owners; then it was enlarged to include all white adults;
then to include Negroes; then, in several Western States, to
include women. 
 
Thus the line has been constantly advancing, but with many
fluctuations, eddies, and back-currents--like any other stream of
progress.  At the present time the fundamental principles which
underlie popular government, and especially the whole matter of
popular suffrage, are much in the public mind.  The tendency of
government throughout the entire civilized world is strongly in
the direction of placing more and more power in the hands of the
people.  In our own country we are enacting a remarkable group of
laws providing for direct primaries in the nomination of public
officials, for direct election of United States Senators, and for
direct legislation by means of the initiative and referendum; and
we are even going to the point, in many cities, of permitting the
people to recall an elected official who is unsatisfactory.  The
principle of local option, which is nothing but that of direct
government by the people, is being everywhere accepted.  All these
changes affect, fundamentally, the historic structure of our
government, making it less republican and more democratic. 
 
Still more important and far-reaching in its significance is the
tendency of our government, especially our Federal Government, to
regulate or to appropriate great groups of business enterprises
formerly left wholly in private hands.  More and more, private
business is becoming public business. 
 
Now, then, as the weight of responsibility upon the popular vote
is increased, it becomes more and more important that the ballot
should be jealously guarded and honestly exercised.  In the last
few years, therefore, a series of extraordinary new precautions
have been adopted: the Australian ballot, more stringent
registration systems, the stricter enforcement of naturalization
laws to prevent the voting of crowds of unprepared foreigners, and
the imposition by several states, rightly or wrongly, of
educational and property tests.  It becomes a more and more
serious matter every year to be an American citizen, more of an
honor, more of a duty. 
 
At the close of the Civil War, in a time of intense idealistic
emotion, some three-quarters of a million of Negroes, the mass of
them densely ignorant and just out of slavery, with the iron of
slavery still in their souls, were suddenly given the political
rights of free citizens.  A great many people, and not in the
South alone, thought then, and still think, that it was a mistake
to bestow the high powers and privileges of a wholly unrestricted
ballot--a ballot which is the symbol of intelligent self-
government--upon the Negro.  Other people, of whom I am one,
believe that it was a necessary concomitant of the revolution; it
was itself a revolution, not a growth, and like every other
revolution it has had its fearful reaction.  Revolutions, indeed,
change names, but they do not at once change human relationships. 
Mankind is reconstructed not by proclamations, or legislation, or
military occupation, but by time, growth, education, religion,
thought.  At that time, then, the nation drove down the stakes of
its idealism in government far beyond the point it was able to
reach in the humdrum activities of everyday existence.  A reaction
was inevitable; it was inevitable and perfectly natural that there
should be a widespread questioning as to whether all Negroes, or
indeed any Negroes, should properly be admitted to full political
fellowship.  That questioning continues to this day. 
 
Now, the essential principle established by the Fifteenth
Amendment to the Constitution was not that all Negroes should
necessarily be given an unrestricted access to the ballot; but
that the right to vote should not be denied or abridged 'on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.'  This
amendment wiped out the color-line in politics so far as any
written law could possibly do it. 
 
Let me here express my profound conviction that the principle of
political equality then laid down is a sound, valid, and
absolutely essential principle in any free government; that
restrictions upon the ballot, when necessary, should be made to
apply equally to white and colored citizens; and that the
Fifteenth Amendment ought not to be, and cannot be repealed. 
Moreover, I am convinced that the principle of political equality
is more firmly established to-day in this country than it was
forty years ago, when it had only Northern bayonets behind it. 
For now, however short the practice falls of reaching the legal
standard, the principle is woven into the warp and woof of
Southern life and Southern legislation.  Many Southern white
leaders of thought are to-day CONVINCED, not FORCED believers in
the principle; and that is a great omen. 
 
Limitations have come about, it is true, and were to be expected
as the back-currents of the revolution.  Laws providing for
educational and property qualifications as a prerequisite to the
exercise of the suffrage have been passed in all the Southern
States, and have operated to exclude from the ballot large numbers
of both white and colored citizens, who on account of ignorance or
poverty are unable to meet the tests.  These provisions, whatever
the opinion entertained as to the wisdom of such laws, are well
within the principle laid down by the Fifteenth Amendment.  But
several Southern States have gone a step further, and by means of
the so-called 'grandfather laws,' have exempted certain ignorant
white men from the necessity of meeting the educational and
property tests.  These unfair 'grandfather laws,' however, in some
of the states adopting them, have now expired by limitation. 
 
Let me then lay down this general proposition:-- 
 
Nowhere in the South to-day is the Negro cut off LEGALLY, as a
Negro, from the ballot.  Legally, to-day, any Negro who can meet
the comparatively slight requirements as to education, or
property, or both, can cast his ballot on a basis of equality with
the white man.  I have emphasized the word legally, for I know the
PRACTICAL difficulties which confront the Negro votes in many
parts of the South.  The point I wish to make is that legally the
Negro is essentially the political equal of the white man; but
that practically, in the enforcement of the law, the legislative
ideal is still pegged out far beyond the actual performance. 
 
Now, then, if we are interested in the problem of democracy, we
have two courses open to us.  We may think the laws are unjust to
the Negro, and incidentally to the 'poor white' man as well.  If
we do, we have a perfect right to agitate for changes; and we can
do much to disclose, without heat, the actual facts regarding the
complicated and vexatious legislative situation in the South, as
regards the suffrage.  Every change in the legislation upon this
subject should, indeed, be jealously watched, that the principle
of political equality between the races be not legally curtailed. 
The doctrine laid down in the Fifteenth Amendment must, at any
hazard, be maintained. 
 
But, personally,--and I am here voicing a profound conviction,--I
think our emphasis at present should be laid upon the practical
rather than upon the legal aspect of the problem; I think we
should take advantage of the widely prevalent feeling in the South
that the question of suffrage has been settled, legally, for some
time to come: of the desire on the part of many Southern people,
both white and colored, to turn aside from the discussion of the
political status of the Negro. 
 
In short, let us for the time being accept the laws as they are,
and build upward from that point.  Let us turn our attention to
the practical task of finding out why it is that the laws we
already have are not enforced, and how best to secure an honest
vote for every Negro and equally for every 'poor white' man, who
is able to meet the requirements, but who for one reason or
another does not or cannot now exercise his rights.  I include the
disfranchised white man as well as the Negro, because I take it
that we are interested, first of all, in democracy, and unless we
can arouse the spirit of democracy, South and North, we can hope
for justice neither for Negroes, nor for the poorer class of white
men, nor for the women of the factories and shops, nor for the
children of the cottonmills. 
 
Taking up this side of the problem we shall discover two entirely
distinct difficulties:-- 
 
First, we shall find many Negroes, and indeed hundreds of
thousands of white men as well, who might vote, but who, through
ignorance, or inability or unwillingness to pay the poll-taxes, or
from mere lack of interest, disfranchise themselves. 
 
The second difficulty is peculiar to the Negro.  It consists in
open or concealed intimidation on the part of the white men who
control the election machinery.  In many places in the South to- 
day no Negro, how well qualified, would dare to present himself
for registration; when he does, he is rejected for some trivial or
illegal reason. 
 
Thus we have to meet a vast amount of apathy and ignorance and
poverty on the one hand, and the threat of intimidation on the
other. 
 
First of all, for it is the chief injustice as between white and
colored men with which we have to deal,--an injustice which the
law already makes illegal and punishable,--how shall we meet the
matter of intimidation?  As I have already said, the door of the
suffrage is everywhere legally open to the Negro, but a certain
sort of Southerner bars the passage-way.  He stands there and, law
or no law, keeps out many Negroes who might vote; and he
represents in most parts of the South the prevailing public
opinion. 
 
Shall we meet this situation by force?  What force is available? 
Shall the North go down and fight the South?  You and I know that
the North to-day has no feeling but friendship for the South. 
More than that--and I say it with all seriousness, because it
represents what I have heard wherever I have gone in the North to
make inquiries regarding the Negro problem--the North, wrongly or
rightly, is to-day more than half convinced that the South is
right in imposing some measure of limitation upon the franchise. 
There is now, in short, no disposition anywhere in the North to
interfere in internal affairs in the South--not even with the
force of public opinion. 
 
What other force, then, is to be invoked?  Shall the Negro revolt? 
Shall he migrate?  Shall he prosecute his case in the courts?  The
very asking of these questions suggests the inevitable reply. 
 
We might as well, here and now, dismiss the idea of force, express
or implied.  There are times of last resort which call for force;
but this is not such a time. 
 
What other alternatives are there? 
 
Accepting the laws as they are, then, there are two methods of
procedure, neither sensational nor exciting.  I have no quick cure
to suggest, but only old and tried methods of commonplace growth. 
 
The underlying causes of the trouble in the country being plainly
ignorance and prejudice, we must meet ignorance and prejudice with
their antidotes, education and association. 
 
Every effort should be made to extend free education among both
Negroes and white people.  A great extension of education is now
going forward in the South.  The Negro is not by any means getting
his full share; but, as certainly as sunshine makes things grow,
education in the South will produce tolerance.  That there is
already such a growing tolerance no one who has talked with the
leading white men in the South can doubt.  The old fire-eating,
Negro-baiting leaders of the Tillman-Vardaman type are swiftly
passing away: a far better and broader group is coming into power. 
 
In his last book, Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Alabama, expresses
this new point of view when he says,-- 
 
'There is no question here as to the unrestricted admission [to
the ballot] of the great masses of our ignorant and semi-ignorant
blacks.  I know no advocate of such admission.  But the question
is as to whether the individuals of the race, upon conditions or
restrictions legally imposed and fairly administered, shall be
admitted to adequate and increasing representation in the
electorate.  And as that question is more seriously and more
generally considered, many of the leading publicists of the South,
I am glad to say, are quietly resolved that the answer shall be in
the affirmative.' 
 
From an able Southern white man, a resident of New Orleans, I
received recently a letter containing these words:-- 
 
'I believe we have reached the bottom, and a sort of quiescent
period.  I think it most likely that from now on there will be a
gradual increase of the Negro vote.  And I honestly believe that
the less said about it, the surer the increase will be.' 
 
Education--and by education I mean education of all sorts,
industrial, professional, classical, in accordance with each man's
talents--will not only produce breadth and tolerance, but will
help to cure the apathy which now keeps so many thousands of both
white men and Negroes from the polls: for it will show them that
it is necessary for every man to exercise all the political rights
within his reach.  If he fails voluntarily to take advantage of
the rights he already has, how shall he acquire more rights? 
 
And as ignorance must be met by education, so prejudice must be
met with its antidote, which is association.  Democracy does not
consist in mere voting, but in association, the spirit of common
effort, of which the ballot is a mere visible expression.  When we
come to know one another we soon find that the points of likeness
are much more numerous than the points of difference.  And this
human association for the common good, which is democracy, is
difficult to bring about anywhere, whether among different classes
of white people, or between white people and Negroes.  As one of
the leaders of the Negro race, Dr. Du Bois, has said,-- 
 
'Herein lies the tragedy of the age.  Not that men are poor: all
men know something of poverty.  Not that men are wicked: who is
good?  Not that men are ignorant: what is truth?  Nay, but that
men know so little of each other.' 
 
After the Atlanta riot I attended a number of conferences between
leading white men and leading colored men.  It is true those
meetings bore evidence of awkwardness and embarrassment, for they
were among the first of the sort to take place in the South, but
they were none the less valuable.  A white man told me after one
of the meetings,-- 
 
'I did not know that there were any such sensible Negroes in the
South.' 
 
And a Negro told me that it was the first time in his life that he
had ever heard a Southern white man reason in a friendly way with
a Negro concerning their common difficulties. 
 
More and more these associations of white and colored men, at
certain points of contact, must and will come about.  Already, in
connection with various educational and business projects in the
South, white and colored men meet on common grounds, and the way
has been opened to a wider mutual understanding.  And it is common
enough now, where it was unheard of a few years ago, for both
white men and Negroes to speak from the same platform in the
South.  I have attended a number of such meetings.  Thus slowly-- 
awkwardly, at first, for two centuries of prejudice are not
immediately overcome--the white man and Negro will come to know
one another, not merely as master and servant, but as co-workers. 
These things cannot be forced. 
 
One reason why the white man and the Negro have not got together
more rapidly in the South than they have, is because they have
tried always to meet at the sorest points.  When sensible people,
who must live together whether or no, find that there are points
at which they cannot agree, it is the part of wisdom to avoid
these points, and to meet upon other and common interests.  Upon
no other terms, indeed, can a democracy exist, for in no
imaginable future state will individuals cease to disagree with
one another upon something less than half of all the problems of
life. 
 
'Here we all live together in a great country,' say the apostles
of this view; 'let us all get together and develop it.  Let the
Negro do his best to educate himself, to own his own land, and to
buy and sell with the white people in the fairest possible way.' 
 
It is wonderful, indeed, how close together men who are stooping
to a common task soon come. 
 
Now, buying and selling, land ownership and common material
pursuits, may not be the highest points of contact between man and
man, but they are real points, and help to give men an idea of the
worth of their fellows, white or black.  How many times, in the
South, I heard white men speak in high admiration of some Negro
farmer who had been successful, or of some Negro blacksmith who
was a worthy citizen, or of some Negro doctor who was a leader of
his race. 
 
It is curious, once a man (any man, white or black) learns to do
his job well, how he finds himself in a democratic relationship  
with other men.  I remember asking a prominent white citizen of a
town in Central Georgia if he knew anything about Tuskegee.  He
said,-- 
 
'Yes: I had rather a curious experience last fall.  I was building
a hotel and couldn't get any one to do the plastering as I wanted
it done.  One day I saw two Negro plasterers at work in a new
house that a friend of mine was building.  I watched them for an
hour.  They seemed to know their trade.  I invited them to come
over and see me.  They came, took the contract for my work, hired
a white man to carry mortar at a dollar a day, and when they got
through it was the best job of plastering in town.  I found that
they had learned their trade at Tuskegee.  They averaged four
dollars a day each in wages.  We tried to get them to locate in
our town, but they went back to school.' 
 
When I was in Mississippi a prominent banker showed me his
business letter-heads. 
 
'Good job, isn't it?' he said.  'A Negro printer did it.  He wrote
to me asking if he might bid on my work.  I replied that although
I had known him a long time I couldn't give him the job merely
because he was a Negro.  He told me to forget his color, and said
that if he couldn't do as good a job and do it as reasonably as
any white man could, he didn't want it.  I let him try, and now he
does most of our printing.' 
 
Out of such points of contact, then, encouraged by such wise
leaders as Booker T. Washington, will grow an ever finer and finer
spirit of association and of common and friendly knowledge.  And
that will inevitably lead to an extension upon the soundest
possible basis of the Negro franchise.  I know cases where white
men have urged intelligent Negroes to come and cast their ballots,
and have stood sponsor for them, out of genuine respect.  As a
result, to-day, the Negroes who vote in the South are, as a class,
men of substance and intelligence, fully equal to the tasks of
citizenship. 
 
Thus, I have boundless confidence not only in the sense of the
white men of the South, but in the innate capability of the Negro,
and that once these two come really to know each other, not at
sore points of contact, but as common workers for a common
country, the question of suffrage will gradually solve itself
along the lines of true democracy. 
 
Another influence also will tend to change the status of the Negro
as a voter.  That is the pending break-up of the political
solidarity of the South.  All the signs point to a political
realignment upon new issues in this country, both South and North. 
Old party names may even pass away.  And that break-up, with the
attendant struggle for votes, is certain to bring into politics
thousands of Negroes and white men now disfranchised.  The result
of a real division on live issues has been shown in many local
contests in the South, as in the fight against the saloons, when
every qualified Negro voter, and every Negro who could qualify,
was eagerly pushed forward by one side or the other.  With such a
division on new issues the Negro will tend to exercise more and
more political power, dividing, not on the color line, but on the
principles at stake. 
 
Thus in spite of the difficulties which now confront the Negro, I
cannot but look upon the situation in a spirit of optimism.  I
think sometimes we are tempted to set a higher value upon the
ritual of a belief than upon the spirit which underlies it.  The
ballot is not democracy: it is merely the symbol or ritual of
democracy, and it may be full of passionate social, yes, even
religious significance, or it may be a mere empty and dangerous
formalism.  What we should look to, then, primarily, is not the
shadow, but the substance of democracy in this country.  Nor must
we look for results too swiftly; our progress toward democracy is
slow of growth and needs to be cultivated with patience and
watered with faith.


NEGRO SUFFRAGE IN A DEMOCRACY
by Ray Stannard Baker
Atlantic Monthly 106 (1910): 612-619.