be done with your taxes, and the right to express your own needs. If you are denied these rights you are not a citizen. Well, in sixteen southern states there are over eight million Negroes in this anomalous position. [5] Of course, many good people contend that they may be unfit to exercise the right of suffrage. If that is so, then who is fit to exercise it for them? This argument covers a fundamental fallacy in our prevailing conception of the function of the ballot. We think that it is a privilege to be conferred for “fitness.” But it isn’t. It is an instrument by which the people of a community express their will, their wants and their needs. And all those are entitled to use it who have wants, needs and desires that are worth consideration by society. If they are not worth considering, then be brutally frank about it; say so, and establish a protectorate over them. But have done with the silly cant of “fitness.” People vote to express their wants. Of course, they will make mistakes. They are not gods. But they have a right to make their own mistakes—the Negroes. All other Americans have. That is why they had Ruef in San Francisco, and still have Murphy in New York.

[5]

But the American republic says, in effect, that eight million Americans shall be political serfs. Now, this might be effected with decency by putting it into the national constitution. But it isn’t there. The national constitution has two provisions expressly penalizing this very thing. Yet the government—the President, Congress, the Supreme Court—wink at it. This is not what we call political decency. But, just the same, it is done. How is it done? By fraud and force. Tillman of South Carolina has told in the United States [6] Senate how the ballot was taken from Negroes by shooting them—that is, by murder. But murder is not necessary now. In certain southern states in order to vote a man must have had a grandfather who voted before Negroes were freed. In others, he must be able to interpret and understand any clause in the Constitution, and a white registration official decides whether he does understand. And the colored men of states like Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana who meet such tests as those states provide are disfranchised by the “white primary” system. According to this system only those who vote at the primaries can vote at the general elections. But the South Carolina law provides that: “At this election only white voters … and such Negroes as voted the Democratic ticket in 1876 and have voted the Democratic ticket continuously since … may vote.” Of course, they know that none of them voted that ticket in 1876 or have done so 

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