colored
people who live in the United States to-day, and not the lowbrowed,
man-eating savage whom the Southern white likes to set upon a block and
contrast with Shakespeare and Newton and Washington and Lincoln.

Despite and in defiance of the Federal Constitution, to-day in the six
Southern States of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina,
South Carolina and Virginia, containing an aggregate colored population
of about 6,000,000, these have been, to all intents and purposes,
denied, so far as the States can effect it, the right to vote. This
disfranchisement is accomplished by various methods, devised with much
transparent ingenuity, the effort being in each instance to violate the
spirit of the Federal Constitution by disfranchising the Negro, while
seeming to respect its letter by avoiding the mention of race or color.

These restrictions fall into three groups. The first comprises a
property qualification--the ownership of $300 worth or more of real or
personal property (Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia and South Carolina); the
payment of a poll tax (Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia); an
educational qualification--the ability to read and write (Alabama,
Louisiana, North Carolina). Thus far, those who believe in a restricted
suffrage everywhere, could perhaps find no reasonable fault with any one
of these qualifications, applied either separately or together.

But the Negro has made such progress that these restrictions alone would
perhaps not deprive him of effective representation. Hence the second
group. This comprises an "understanding" clause--the applicant must be
able "to read, or understand when read to him, any clause in the
Constitution" (Mississippi), or to read and explain, or to understand
and explain when read to him, any section of the Constitution
(Virginia); an employment qualification--the voter must be regularly
employed in some lawful occupation (Alabama); a character
qualification--the voter must be a person of good character and who
"understands the duties and obligations of citizens under a republican
[!] form of government" (Alabama). The qualifications under the first
group it will be seen, are capable of exact demonstration; those under
the second group are left to the discretion and judgment of the
registering officer--for in most instances these are all requirements
for registration, which must precede voting.

But the first group, by its own force, and the second group, und