4], the decision of which is
commonly supposed to have sustained their constitutionality, only
brought the question up collaterally without proper allegations or
sufficient proof. From an intimation made by the Court in this case, it
is not improbable that when a direct issue upon their constitutionality
is properly presented, it may render a decision consonant with that
which it rendered in the case of Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, wherein the Court
said:

"Though the law in itself be fair on its face and impartial in
appearance, yet, if it be applied and administered by public
authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as to
practically make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons
in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of
equal justice is still within the prohibition of the
Constitution."[15]

There are other grounds for the belief that the Federal Supreme Court
will refuse to sustain these instruments of disfranchisement, even
though it has not of recent years acted in a manner to inspire faith.

These enactments have never received the approval of the people of the
states. Of a total of 235,604 male citizens of voting age in South
Carolina in 1890, more than 102,000 of whom were white men, only 60,925
participated in the election of November 6, 1894, at which the members
of the constitutional convention were elected. Of the number thus voting
only 31,402 were counted in favor of holding the convention. Thus
one-seventh of the citizens called a convention and enacted a
constitution which disfranchised more than one hundred thousand
electors. The constitutions of Mississippi and Louisiana were adopted in
the same way.

These so called constitutions, besides being repugnant to the spirit and
purpose of the Fifteenth Amendment are also violative of the acts of
Congress restoring the rebellious states to the Union, which acts the
Federal Supreme Court has on several occasions declared
constitutional.[16]

Pursuant to the reconstruction legislation, these states adopted
constitutions admitting the Negro to the ballot and then asked to be
readmitted to representation in Congress. Congress, having approved of
their constitutions, enacted that they be entitled to representation in
Congress, "upon the following _fundamental_ conditions: That the
constitutions of neither of said states shall ever be so amended or
changed as to deprive any citizen or cl