The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments
The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments
The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16
Book Excerpt
the strong will do every time whether they be men or wolves. The shepherd protects the sheep from the depredations of the wolves, and the ballot protects poverty against property, a weak race or class against the hate and aggressions of stronger ones within the same country.
A citizen without the ballot in America is in fact, whatever he may be in law, a de-citizenized man--exposed in consequence to the enmities, the jealousies, the insults and the violence of other citizens who are more fortunate in this regard. He is, whatever may be his legal status on paper, a proscribed man, subject to unmerited and unmeasured ignominies and injustices at the hands of his country, its society, its passions and prejudices. Governor Andrew was right, a disfranchised man, a disfranchised class must become ultimately, "The hopeless pariah of a merciless civilization." This is the peril, the fate which hangs over the colored race at the close of the first fifty years of its emancipation.
Governor Andrew's schem
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