in
the postoffice department--for none of which, by the way, is the Negro
charged with any responsibility, and for none of which is the restriction
of the suffrage a remedy seriously proposed. Rhode Island is indeed the
only Northern State which has a property qualification for the franchise!

There are three tribunals to which the colored people may justly appeal
for the protection of their rights: the United States Courts, Congress and
public opinion. At present all three seem mainly indifferent to any
question of human rights under the Constitution. Indeed, Congress and the
Courts merely follow public opinion, seldom lead it. Congress never enacts
a measure which is believed to oppose public opinion;--your Congressman
keeps his ear to the ground. The high, serene atmosphere of the Courts is
not impervious to its voice; they rarely enforce a law contrary to public
opinion, even the Supreme Court being able, as Charles Sumner once put it,
to find a reason for every decision it may wish to render; or, as
experience has shown, a method to evade any question which it cannot
decently decide in accordance with public opinion. The art of straddling
is not confined to the political arena. The Southern situation has been
well described by a colored editor in Richmond: "When we seek relief at
the hands of Congress, we are informed that our plea involves a legal
question, and we are referred to the Courts. When we appeal to the Courts,
we are gravely told that the question is a political one, and that we must
go to Congress. When Congress enacts remedial legislation, our enemies
take it to the Supreme Court, which promptly declares it
unconstitutional." The Negro might chase his rights round and round this
circle until the end of time, without finding any relief.

Yet the Constitution is clear and unequivocal in its terms, and no Supreme
Court can indefinitely continue to construe it as meaning anything but
what it says. This Court should be bombarded with suits until it makes
some definite pronouncement, one way or the other, on the broad question
of the constitutionality of the disfranchising Constitutions of the
Southern States. The Negro and his friends will then have a clean-cut
issue to take to the forum of public opinion, and a distinct ground upon
which to demand legislation for the enforcement of the Federal
Constitution. The case from Alabama was carried to the Supreme Court
expressly to determine the constitutionality