Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/200

 gress show that these functionaries were, as a matter of policy, interested in their constituents, and that they promoted legislation for general advancement for the reason that the circumstances of the people whom they represented warranted legislation of that sort.

For the tendency of some of the Negro Congressmen to propose legislative measures which were racial in character, two reasons are conspicuously obvious. In the first place, these men regarded themselves the official spokesmen of their race. The power conferred upon them they believed to be evidence of the expectation and confidence of the Negroes in them to secure for the race civil rights, economic opportunity and political preferment. They found, moreover, that legislation granting to Negroes their civil rights failed often to protect them in the exercise of those rights. For such protection, then, these Congressmen had often to contend. These personal, ever present, inherent duties permitted these Congressmen neither time nor energy for the preparation of legislative measures of other types.

Another reason for restricting their efforts to local measures or those peculiar to their race was the rule of politics that all honor for the formulation of national measures must attach to the seasoned veterans in Congress. This custom has become so well established as to be traditional. It could not have been expected that the Negro members, then, should take the lead in Congressional legislation. They faithfully cooperated with the leaders of Congress and generally voted for measures considered productive of the greatest good of the country.

Why did the Negro Congressmen fail to have their measures enacted into law? The path of a bill is fraught with difficulties. The well-known journey through the committee, through both houses of Congress, to the conference and to the President, but few bills complete. Many bills of the Negro Congressmen died of this natural cause. Others because of lack of merit were reported adversely from com-