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Woman Suffrage: a Menace to the South [Page 1] Woman Suffrage A Woman Suffrage: A Menace to the South [Page 1] Woman Suffrage A MENACE TO THE SOUTH A Protest Against Its Imposition Through Federal Authority [Page 2] [Image: Black and white drawing of an African American woman fighting off large birds with a club labeled "Federal Constitution" while a boy and a girl cling to her skirts. The birds have men's faces and are labelled "Grand-Father Clause", "Jim Crow Law", "Segregation", and "Seduction". A man in a suit is seen running away in the background while saying "I don't believe in agitating and fighting. My policy is to pursue the line of least resistance. To h--- with Citizenship Rights I want money I think the white folk will let me stay on my land as long as I stay in my place. – (Shades of WILMINGTON, N.C.) The good whites aint responsible for bad administration of the law and lynching and pèonage, --let me think awhile: er—"] "WOMAN TO THE RESCUE!" From "The Crisis" of May, 1916. [Page 3] Woman Suffrage A MENACE TO THE SOUTH A Protest Against Its Imposition Through Federal Authority I. INTRODUCTION. The recent adoption of woman suffrage in New York, and the efforts being made to obtain the enfranchisement of women in all the States, through an amendment of the Federal Constitution, gives national interest to the question whether women shall be thus made voters. The vital importance, as I believe, of this question to the South, not merely my disbelief in the enfranchisement of women, induces me to make an effort to prevent woman suffrage from being adopted by, or thrust upon, any State in which there is a considerable negro population. The importance of the issue will also account for, and justify, I hope, my intense but not intemperate opposition to the infliction of woman suffrage through an amendment of the Federal Constitution, for it will be an infliction on the people of those States that vote against it. II. THE CONSTITUTION. Art. I, Sec. 2, of the Constitution of the United States, provides: "The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature." Art. I, Sec. 3, provides that the Legislature of each State shall elect two Senators every six years. Thus the Constitution—the original copartnership agreement between the States—clearly gives to each State the right to determine those who shall either directly [Page 4] or indirectly elect Congressmen and Senators. Why should this right—this original agreement between the States—be taken from the citizens of the several States? Why should the State of Vermont or Washington say who shall vote for officials in Alabama or Florida? In each State the question of those who should vote for either State of Federal officers is purely a question of State policy and not at all national. How would California and the other Pacific Coasts States like to have Chinese or Japanese voters imposed on them by the Gulf or Atlantic Woman Suffrage: A Menace to the South States? I warn the people of the States generally that if woman suffrage is inflicted on the South through an amendment of the Federal Constitution, the bars will have been lowered, and a long step taken towards forcing on all the States whatever three-fourths of them may wish to impose, because the infliction of woman suffrage on the South—and it will be an infliction—will be a declaration that the States generally have taken to themselves the right to legislate for the several States with respect to matters very much, if not altogether, local and domestic in character. The people of the several States should long hesitate to adopt a policy of that kind, if any semblance to the original theory of our Federal Government is to be maintained. III. NEGRO SUFFRAGE Negro suffrage was imposed on the South immediately after our Civil War by an amendment of the Federal Constitution, and thereby that fair portion of our country, and its Anglo-Saxon civilization, was nearly wrecked. The people of the South have much to be proud of in their Civil War record, but their greatest glory is the fact that they saved themselves from negroism after the war; and both as a people and individually maintained standards that before and since the war have been blessings to the whole country. Try to imagine what the United States would be today if the people of the South had not met and overcome the direful conditions that confronted them after the Civil War—conditions almost infinitely worse than those faced by any European nation in a thousand years. IV. THE MENACE OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE. I speak of the people of the South as having overcome post-bellum conditions that so seriously threatened them. I err. These conditions were only scotched—not destroyed—and each year they will grow stronger; and through sleepless vigilance only can their revival be prevented, for each year the negroes of the South will be better able to meet the "grandfather" and other tests, and pay the poll taxes through which so many of them are now disfranchised. There is no blinking the fact that the negro vote in the South is suppressed—lawfully, as the United States Supreme Court has decided, but, nevertheless, suppressed; and I would not let the people of the South forget this fact—the elimination of the negro vote, for to it they owe immunity from negro rule in many sections of eight or ten of the Southern States. The people of the North have ceased to condemn those of the South for their practical disfranchisement of the negro, for the people of the North know full well that under like conditions they would act as the people of the South have acted. The negro man works day after day beside the white man and realizes that he does not suffer because he fails to vote, for many amongst them who could meet the voter's tests do not attempt to do so. But, some say, female suffrage will add as many white women as black to the electorate, so wherein lies the danger from giving negro women the right to vote? Though for the sake of the argument I may grant that, speaking in round figures, there are as many white as black women in the South, this does not, for several reasons, meet my objection to the latter voting. In the first place, through woman suffrage you practically double the undesirable voters of the South, for so considered in the South are negro voters, whether men or women, and very largely throughout the Union are they thus looked on. I repeat, woman suffrage will practically double the undesirable and to be suppressed vote of the South. Furthermore these added women voters will be harder to eliminate than the men of their race, and for these reasons: Their right to vote will be a novelty and they will be urged by their preachers—(who are the best educated of the race, and the politicians, guides, and mentors, of their people, and more influential with the women than the men)—to exercise their rights. The negro women are also better educated than the men, and through the urging of their "pastors" will put aside the dollar or two for their poll tax, which the men will not pay for the privilege of voting. In short, the possible one hundred per cent added to the negro vote through woman suffrage will more than double the difficulty of controlling that vote. [Page 5] So far there has been no bid for the negro vote in the Southern States. All white men in these States, Republicans as well as Democrats, of Northern birth as well as Southern, recognize the fact that it would be a calamity for the negro to attain political power, and so far this conviction, and the social Woman Suffrage: A Menace to the South ostracism and business disadvantages that would attach to any one politically, or socially, catering to the negro, has been sufficient to prevent a dangerous cultivation of the negro voter since the overthrow of "Carpet-Bag" government in the Southern States. But with the practical doubling of the negro voters, and, in all probability, the more than doubling of the number of negroes who would vote, can this failure to cultivate negroes for their votes be counted on? Is it not folly beyond description to take any chances on such a vital matter, especially when so little, if anything, is to be thereby gained? Whatever is gained through woman suffrage, if it is acquired by an amendment of the Federal Constitution, is achieved through such a serious injustice to the people of the South that no white man, or white woman, in this country should think for a moment of imposing it on others of their race. Slavery chiefly, if not solely, brought on our Civil War, and negro emancipation, and the post-bellum negro problem may yet make serious trouble for us. I do not intend to intimate that a second effort at secession is possible, or even thinkable; but the brutal or reckless indifference of the people of some of the States to the deep convictions and anxious problems of the people of other States may be a serious obstacle to that thorough union which we all so much desire—to the Union-wide brotherly love of the white people that is now founded, and should be preserved in "A union of hearts, a union of hands, A union that no one can sever; A union of lakes, a union of lands, The American Union forever." I do not hesitate to declare my thorough conviction that women do not need the vote for their protection, or for their best interests, in any State.
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