ass of citizens of the United
States of the right to vote in said states, who are entitled to vote by
the constitution thereof herein recognized."[17]

These states accepted these fundamental conditions and are consequently
bound by them.[18]

III

What effect have these disfranchising enactments had upon the status of
the Negro? Has he lost nothing more than the bare right to vote? Has he
been deprived of nothing but an abstract right to a voice in the affairs
of government and of no other privilege than the possibility of a share
of political power?

Surely the loss of any one of the foregoing is not unimportant in a
democratic form of government. But he has lost much more, and the
probabilities are that, if these obvious discriminations are allowed to
continue, he will be brought to his deepest humiliation. The law which
deprives him of the badge of citizenship, changes at once his legal
status and cuts him off from respect. His disqualification as an elector
shuts him out of the jury box in courts where what few rights he has
left are adjudicated and his grievances redressed. His disqualification
as an elector and as a juror discredits him as a witness. In the states
which have adopted these disfranchising constitutions, more than three
hundred thousand citizens have been thereby disqualified as jurors. This
is all the more outrageous, because in the same states advantage has
been taken in criminal legislation of what the Supreme Court of
Mississippi has termed "certain peculiarities of habit and character of
the Negro" whereby "furtive offenses," which in other communities are
treated as mere misdemeanors, are made felonies and are usually visited
with greater punishment than are the "robust crimes" of the whites. In
South Carolina, for instance, the breach of a labor contract has been
made a crime, the object being to reduce the Negro to a state of
serfdom.

Not only has the legal status of the Negro been gravely affected by
these disfranchising enactments; his economic status has also been
lowered. A Mississippian states the following as the reason for
disfranchising the Negro in his state:

"It is a question of political economy which the people of the
North can not realize nor understand _and which they have no right
to discuss as they have no power to determine_. If the Negro is
permitted to engage in politics his usefulness as a laborer is at
an end. _He can no longer be con