The Afro-American. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1892-1899, 1895-10-26
GREAT REPUBLICAN, NEWSPAPER
STATES THE CASE AIS no BLACK
AND. WHITE.

4tkItI1S III bnC WHINE AuM h1t41h AAGCs Ia
That State. Politically, the colored man
IS to be disfranchised. Socially he is to
be ostracised These things are not to
be done, as heretofore, By indirection
anda taclt agreement among the ruling
VIII ties to ignore, and in practice nulIify,
the great war amendments by which the
Negro was not only made a free man
but voter. Henceforth they are to be
written into the Fundamental law Of the
State.
The constitution Of South Carolina, as
This convention Is recasting it, will take
the ballot away from the colored race,
except from such few members Of it as
are able to pass educational tests. Prob
ably eight out Of every ten colored men
in the State will lose their votes, and so
far as the great right OF suffrage is con-
cerned, will be remanded back to their
old status before the war.
The ballot has been many times de-
clared by the greatest opponents of free
government 10 be the vital defense of
every citizen, without which he has no
way of asserting or protecting his rights
and interests except by an appeal to
force
If, thirty years ago, when the war
closed, the proposition had been made
to restore the Southern States 10 their
old footing and leave the white men free
to deny the rights of citizenship to the
black men-to pass a sentence Of polili-
cal aud social accommodation against
them, and write it into their State con
sttuti0ns-the statesmen who repre-
scented the North would never have con.
scented to it, and the puplic opinion of
the Northern States would never have
permitted them TO consent to it.
When the thirteenth, fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments to the Federal
Constitution was adopted between 1865
and 1870 they were understood by
everybody, North and South, 10 mean
that The Negro race at the South had
been clothed not only with freedom but
with equal rights, and that the ballot
had been put into its hands as the neces-
sary defence of all its other rights
Gloss it over as we may, the constitu-
ton that South Carolina is now making
for herself puts the colored race outside
the pale of equal citizenship. 1t takes
the ballot away from its men, and de
cIares that the marriage of an person Of
color with white person, though the
former may have only one eighth of Ne
gro blood in his veins, shall be unlaw-
ful and void.
When ex Congressman Robert Smalls
% behalf of his race. offered an amend
ment disqualifying for public office any
white man living or cohabitating with
any person having one-eighth or more of
Negro blood, and giving the children Of
any such white men the right to bear
the names of their fathers. the white
majority of the convention squirmed and
wriggled like so many cells.
They are going to Geny the right Of
lawful marriage to black and while, but
they are not ready to prescribe or punish
white men for debauching and degrad-
ing the black race. Miscegenation is to
b, the white mans privilege but not
the black mans right, even where the
latter is seven. eights white. A curious
incident of the debate on this miscegena-
ton section was Senator Tillman's reply
10 a motion to amend it so as to forbid
marriage between white person hav-
ing any Negro blood. instead of draw
ing the line at one-eighth or more Ne
gro blood. Tillman said that there was
s'more dynamite in this amendment than
all the rest of the constitution"
The explosive element, he said, was
the fact that there were many families
in the State well-known to have Negro
lood in their veins, though not so much
as one-eighth. He pleaded that it would
be terrible thing to force these fami-
lies by constitutional enactment to sep
srAte themselves from the whites, with
whom, he said, they had been living on
terms of equality for scores of years, and
compel them to intermarry with
Negroes only.
Tillman went on to argue that If a
person had no more than one-s!xteenth
Of black blood he or she should be al
lowed to intermarry with pure whites.
Thus it appears that IS to l is the cor
rect ratio for marriage as well as coin
age in South Carolina. The ruling
statesmen of that State are in favor of
maintaining social and marital equality
between the two races, with free conju-
gal coinage on the basis of sixteen parts
white to one part black.
This opens up quite p&zzling pro
blem in moral fractions. Why should
one sixteenth of black blood be entitled
TO all the social advantages of the pure
white, while one-eight black blood is TO
be cast into the outer darkness of social
ostracism? What is the saving quality
of one-sixteenth any more than one
fourth or one-half?
II black blood is to be barred at all
simply because it is black, either at the
ballot box or at the marriage-altar, why
1T BAR it altogether? Yet it is evident
that under the new South Carolina rule
a person Of Ethiopian extraction may
preserve his parity with the first fami-
lies at sixteen 10 one and yet be the de-
scendant of persons who are very much