The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-06-27
"Grdndfdther Clause Decision
 Will Not Affect Aldbdma's Ld7u
In Scholarly Opinion Noted Constitutional Lawyer Reviews Negro Suffrage in State and Shows Why the Su preme Courts Decision Will Have No Effect
 On the States Suffrage Law

Annscon, June 25.-(Special John B. Knox, president of the last consti- tutional convention in Alabama and considered one of the best informed constitutional lawyers in the south, has given out scholarly statement here on the so-called grandfather clause" regulating the suffrage in states.
 Mir Knox stated when asked his opinion on the question that the decision will have no effect whatever on the Alabama provision. which has been adopted by Georgia and Virginia and in the conclusion of his article he takes a fling at view advanced by former United States Senator Frank S. White, who commented on the decision in the Oklahoma case.
 When asked what effect the decision of the supreme court would have Oh the Alabama law, MT Knox said:
 'T am as sure as a man can be of anything in this life that it will have none whatever It is not easy to make a constitutional question plain to the average laYman, or even to some law yers, but I hold that we ought to be able to make the truth manifest to any man who will look it square in the face.
 "Perhaps the constitutional provi- sion in question may be more quickly comprehended if we understand the conditions which forced its adoption and the mischief it was intended to remedy.
 An Important Question
 q grant that the question involved Is one of vast importance to the peo- pie of our state and to the people of all the southern states. l have had oc- easion more than once to emphasize the fact that the sudden enfranchise- mcnt of a large mass of ignorant voters, just emerged from slavery by the adoption of the fifteenth amend mcnt, has been recognized almost ev anywhere as the mistake of the nine teenth century. The consequent evils that we have suffered, in common with other states need not be dwelt upon. They go to make the history of re- construction in the south and represent the darkest days through which our people have ever, and, l trust, will cver be called upon to pass.
 "The movement for restricted suffrage in this and other states was a movement to amelorate and remove the unfor- tunate condition which the creation of an ignorant vicious and incompetent cleo torate had brought upon us, so far as this could be done within the limits imposed by the federal constitution, after the adoption of the fifteenth amendment. This was the purpose for which the consti- tutional convention of 1901 was assembled. It is true that the negro. led by the un- scrupulous carpetbaggers and scalawags who had msgoverned us under reconstrue- ton, had been driven from power, and our people had resumed control of their gov ernment But this had been accomplished by methods which were in effect revolu- tionary, and it was seen by all thinking men that the continuance of such meth ods as a permanent condition would lead to evils even worse than the disease the system was intended to cure
 "The movement then, which inspired the cal for the convention was a movement for the adoption of constitutional rem edy, and for the abandonment of the rev. olutionary remedy which had been there tofore practced.
 A Constitutional Remedy
 "In this movement for constitutional re- form the southern people were not so much running counter to northern senti- ment as some have supposed Even Charles Sumner himself, in 1870, in speak ing of the trial of Andrew Jackson, whom he and others sought to impeach, mainly because, as a southern man he saw and appreciated the iniquity of negro suffrage, and stood athwart the movement for re- construction in the south-as recorded by Schouler in the seventh volume of his History of the United States'-said to Senator Henderson, who was one of the five senators who voted against impeach- ment, You were right in your vote, and 1 was wrong.
 And now comes the Chicago Tribune, one of the leading republican papers in the north and west. and in it's issue of June l. 1915, speaking of the photo- play, The Birth of a Nation, says It is in all essential episodes grounded on historical fact, representing the struggles of that terrible time in the south when the whites, back from war, saw their government taken over by the newly en- franchised blacks controlled by the north erl carpetbaggers. What happened with the negro ascendant and how the white re- established his supremacy is shown with obvious natural sympathy for the south. and no doubt with such heighten- ing of effect as dramatic art has a right to employ It presents what the south says and the north of our day at least, is inclined to believe to be truth
 While it may be true, that prior to the civil war, some people placed too much emphasis upon the sovereignty of the