Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/337

Rh is out of the region of ordinary politics: it affects the civilization of two races, not for to-day alone, but for a very long time to come; it is up in the region of duty of man to man, of Christian to Christian.

"Since the war no State has had such an opportunity to settle for all time the race question, so far as it concerns politics, as is now given to Louisiana. Will your convention set an example to the world in this respect? Will Louisiana take such high and just grounds in respect to the negro that no one can doubt that the South is as good a friend to the negro 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; for the more I study this question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much a question as to what the white man will do with the negro as to what the negro will do with the white man's civilization.

"The negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of the South that restriction 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 for an ignorant colored 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.