roperty qualifications as are
contained in the Mississippi and South Carolina instruments. The fifth
section of it furnishes a true index to the spirit which is behind all
of these disfranchising enactments. With vindictive memory, the framers
of the Louisiana Constitution qualified as electors all who were
entitled to vote on January 1, 1867 or at any date prior thereto as well
as the sons and grandsons of such persons, whether or not they possess
intelligence or property. Herein they display the same spirit which
refused to accord to the Negro the right to vote previous to 1867.

What has been the attitude of the Courts towards these enactments which
in the interest of oligarchy have set aside republican governments in
the South and nullified the Constitution of the United States?

Naturally, the state courts have upheld them. The most remarkable
judicial utterance since the famous Dred Scott decision is that of the
supreme court of Mississippi in the case of Ratliff vs. Beale,
predicated upon the constitution of Mississippi respecting the elective
franchise. The Court said:

"Within the field of permissible action, under the limitations
imposed by the Federal Constitution, the convention swept the
circle of expedients to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by
the Negro race. By reason of its previous condition of servitude
and dependence, this race had acquired or accentuated certain
peculiarities of habit, of temperament, and character, which
clearly distinguished it as a race from that of the whites--a
patient, docile people, careless, landless, and migratory within
narrow limits, without forethought, and its criminal members given
rather to furtive offenses than to the robust crimes of the whites.
_Restrained by the Federal Constitution from discriminating against
the Negro race, the convention discriminated against its
characteristics and the offenses to which its weaker members were
prone._"[13]

Thus a court created by this new constitution of Mississippi declares
that it, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment, discriminates against the
Negro race "by reason of its previous condition of servitude and
dependence," and at the same time upholds that instrument.

The constitutionality of these disfranchising enactments has not been
made a direct issue in the Supreme Court of the United States. The case
of Williams vs. State of Mississippi[1