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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 23. Trends and Possibilities - 3. Negro Suffrage in the South as an Issue - 4. An Unstable Situation
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514 An American Dilemma
this does not prove that they would not vote if they were allowed to, and
if the vote was given due importance.®
4. An Unstable Situation
Superficially viewed, the situation looks static and stable. This is, I
believe, an illusion. Great changes are working underneath the visible sur-
face, and a dynamic situation full of possibilities is maturing. Let us begin
with some of the smaller changes: the declining value of the dollar has,
since the inauguration of the disfranchising constitutions and election
laws, actually diminished considerably the effectiveness both of the poll
tax requirement and of the property clauses. A substantial inflation will
probably be the result of the present War. The political pressure from the
poorer classes will prevent attempts to raise the money figures in propor-
tion to the rise in price level. The trend actually is in the other direction,
to decrease the size of the poll tax and property requirements. A factor
similar in its effect to inflation is the trend toward direct taxation and away
from indirect taxation. It is possible that when the poll tax becomes only
one direct tax among many, it will not appear to be so large. The present
War is accentuating this trend.
More important is that the improved education of Negroes is rendering
ineffective the literacy and understanding clauses. Every year there is a
smaller proportion of the potential Negro electorate—as of the white one
—
which would be disfranchised by these clauses if they were impartially
applied. They are not, as we have seen, applied honestly. This means that
at least the legal foundations for Negro disfranchisement is gradually
withering away. Keeping the Negroes away from the polls will thus
increasingly have to be accomplished by intimidation, subterfuge or vio-
lence. In a sense, the entire work around igoo to legalize folitical dis-
crimination is being rafidly undone by various social trends.
For two reasons this work cannot well be made over to meet the changes:
first, because the possible means for legal disfranchisement within the loop-
holes of the federal Constitution have been pretty well exhausted, and,
second, because the general political atmosphere of the nation and the
attitude of the Supreme Court are not so acquiescent as half a century
ago when, in the great reaction after Reconstruction, they condoned the
national compromise. Respect for law is being enhanced in the South. It
is true that meanw^hile a social pattern has been established that politics
is white men^s business, and that Negroes should not stick their noses into
it. This is the main explanation of the calm before the storm. But as far
as laws and individual rights mean anything at all in the South—^and, as
we shall see in the next part, there are reasons to believe that they will
’ See Chapter 22, Sections % and 4.
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