The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1900-06-19
MAKES THEM COLOR BLIND.

Marion Butler, in his reaching out
for the sensational, rather over-did
the thing in Morgarton on Saturday.
He was trying to make the white
people believe that the Amendment
would disfranchise them. After fin
ishing that false argument, he started
out to tell them it would disfranchise
their children, and as an object lesson
called by a boy about ten years old
and sat him on table and began to
mourn that the wicked Democrats
were going to deny the ballot to such
white boys. And his object lesson,
sitting on the table was mulatto!..
When some one in the crowd pro-
claimed that it was child with negro
blood that Batter was lamenting
about. it broke up all the willy Sena-
tors sanctimonious love for 1.-The poor
bare-footed white boy" and he un-
sconsciously had exposed the truth
that he is going about the State as
an evapgel of the negro and the mu-
latto, As the truth downed upon him
Butler doubtless thought cc~erning
himself:
He digged a pit,
He digged it deep,
He digged it for his brother,
To punish his sin
He did fall in
The Dit he digged for t'other.''
When the Populist party was first
organized it was white mans party
and SO proclaimed itself. As such it
il fused with the negro party and its
membership began TO fall off. 1t
joined with the Republicans in putting
one thousand negroes in office, and
lost more than half its members. 1t
then fought the elimination of the
negro from politics in order to re-
tain his vote, and lost the confidence of
half the remainder of its voters. When
its leaders carry the remainder up to
the polls to vote against the Amend
ment, the last vestige of the Populist
party will have been swallowed up
by the Republican party.
Coming events cast their shadows
before Already, having so long
fused and co-operated with negroes
and helped to put them in office, the
Populist leader becomes color blind
and has set up mulatto child as the
type of the individual for which he is
battling in North Carolina. If his
policy succeeds, we will have nothing
but mulatto politics in North Carolina
as we had from 1895 until the White
Supremacy Revolution in 1899. 1t was
to put an end to such political mis-
cegenation that the people rose up in
their might two years ago and de-
clared they would have government
by Anglo Saxons without the inter-
mixture of any other race and without
the aid or consent of the African race.
The white man who votes with the
negro is sure to become color blind,
politically, sooner or later. When
Butler returned from college to the
White Supremacy county of Sampson
in 1855 and purchased the Cauca-
sian, a Democratic paper, lie could
tell the difference between a white
child and a mulatto as far as his eye
couldsreach. When he began to trade
and dicker with negroes for office, his
political eyesight began to fail, and
so rapidly has it failed, that politically
he cannot tell the difference between
white man and mulatto, and his
color blindness reached the climax
when he used mulatto child to IL
lustrate his undying love for the
'bare-footed white boy" By mis-
take, he stumbled into Il true dccla-
ration of what he stands for in poll
tics-a mixed government by some
Whites and some negroes, mulatto
government.