ia.

DISFRANCHISEMENTS

During the seventies and eighties the Freedmen were to a considerable
extent disfranchised by means of "election devices, practices and
intimidations."

Since 1890, when Mississippi took the lead, a number of the states have
passed laws restricting the right of suffrage on their part to such
tests as the payment of their annual taxes, previous to a certain date;
ownership of a certain amount of land or personal property, the ability
to read and write the constitution of the state or of the United States,
and the "Grandfather Clause" which permits one unable to meet the
educational or property tests to continue to vote, if he enjoyed that
privilege, or is a lineal descendant of one that did so, previous to the
date mentioned therein, usually 1867.

The following states have enacted laws containing the "Grandfather
Clause:" South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina,
Georgia and in 1910, Oklahoma. This part of the Oklahoma statute reads
as follows:

"But no person who was on January 1, 1866, or at any time prior
thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at
that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant
of such person shall be denied the right to register and vote
because of his inability to so read and write such Constitution."

RESULT CONTRARY TO EXPECTATION

This historic record, of representation in the highest legislative
council of the nation, is very suggestive. That the Freedmen should have
been accorded the largest number of representatives just after the dawn
of freedom, when their general condition has always been described as
extremely deplorable, that this number should have been gradually
diminished with the spread of intelligence among them; and that finally
they should have no representative during the last thirteen years, when
their progress in education and material prosperity has been, at their
fiftieth anniversary, declared to be "wonderful," certainly does not
seem to be in accordance with what one intuitively would expect to be
the natural order of things.

It is quite natural the present order of things should awaken and
develop a feeling of protest on the part of the Freedmen, for they
appreciate rights and privileges as well as other races and nations.

Their segregation, enforced on all alike in cities, public places and
conveyances results also in many disappointing and humil