s. If the
political power of the Negro was a nullity because of his ignorance and
lack of leadership, why were they not content to leave it so, with the
pleasing assurance that if it ever became effective, it would be because
the Negroes had grown fit for its exercise? On the contrary, they have
not rested until the possibility of its revival was apparently headed
off by new State constitutions. Nor are they satisfied with this. There
is no doubt that an effort will be made to secure the repeal of the
Fifteenth Amendment, and thus forestall the development of the wealthy
and educated Negro, whom the South seems to anticipate as a greater
menace than the ignorant ex-slave. However improbable this repeal may
seem, it is not a subject to be lightly dismissed; for it is within the
power of the white people of the nation to do whatever they wish in the
premises--they did it once; they can do it again. The Negro and his
friends should see to it that the white majority shall never wish to do
anything to his hurt. There still stands, before the Negro-hating whites
of the South, the specter of a Supreme Court which will interpret the
Constitution to mean what it says, and what those who enacted it meant,
and what the nation, which ratified it, understood, and which will find
power, in a nation which goes beyond seas to administer the affairs of
distant peoples, to enforce its own fundamental laws; the specter, too,
of an aroused public opinion which will compel Congress and the Courts
to preserve the liberties of the Republic, which are the liberties of
the people. To wilfully neglect the suffrage, to hold it lightly, is to
tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything else whatever is
simply suicidal. Dropping the element of race, disfranchisement is no
more than to say to the poor and poorly taught, that they must
relinquish the right to defend themselves against oppression until they
shall have become rich and learned, in competition with those already
thus favored and possessing the ballot in addition. This is not the
philosophy of history. The growth of liberty has been the constant
struggle of the poor against the privileged classes; and the goal of
that struggle has ever been the equality of all men before the law. The
Negro who would yield this right, deserves to be a slave; he has the
servile spirit. The rich and the educated can, by virtue of their
influence, command many votes; can find other means of protection;