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, under
imaginable conditions, might exclude not only the Negro vote, but a large
part of the white vote. Hence, the third group, which comprises: a
military service qualification--any man who went to war, willingly or
unwillingly, in a good cause or a bad, is entitled to register (