he Negro that no one can doubt that
the South is as good a friend to him as he possesses elsewhere?
In all this, gentlemen of the convention, I am not pleading for
the Negro alone, but for the morals, the higher life, of the
white man as well.

"The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation
of the South that restrictions be put upon the ballot. I know
that you have two serious problems before you; ignorant and
corrupt government, on the one hand; and, on the other, a way to
restrict the ballot so that control will be in the hands of the
intelligent, without regard to race. With the sincerest sympathy
with you in your efforts to find a good way out of the
difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make
a law that will provide an opportunity or temptation for an
ignorant white man to vote, and withhold the opportunity or
temptation from an ignorant coloured man, without injuring both
men. No State can make a law that can thus be executed without
dwarfing, for all time, the morals of the white man in the South.
Any law controlling the ballot that is not absolutely just and
fair to both races will work more permanent injury to the whites
than to the blacks.

"The Negro does not object to an educational and property test,
but let the law be so clear that no one clothed with State
authority will be tempted to perjure and degrade himself by
putting one interpretation upon it for the white man and another
for the black man. Study the history of the South, and you will
find that, where there has been the most dishonesty in the matter
of voting, there you will find to-day the lowest moral condition
of both races. First, there was the temptation to act wrongly
with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an easy step to act
dishonestly with the white man's ballot, to the carrying of
concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the
murder of a white man, and then to lynching. I entreat you not to
pass a law that will prove an eternal millstone about the necks
of your children. No man can have respect for the government and
officers of the law when he knows, deep down in his heart, that
the exercise of the franchise is tainted with fraud.

"The road that the South has been compelled to travel during the