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But few have pretended that the present movement for disfranchisement in the South is for such a purpose; it has been plainly and frankly declared in nearly every case that the object of the disfranchising laws is the elimination of the black man from politics. Now, is this a minor matter which has no influence on the main question of the industrial and intellectual development of the Negro?

Refusal to answer was made a bar to registration, and wilful misstatement was regarded as perjury. Oklahoma adopted its disfranchising amendment in 1910, without valid reason so far as any one outside the State could see, as the proportion of negroes was very small.

The later disfranchising acts have had overwhelming importance, the unfair system of national representation controlling the election of 1916 and thus the attitude of America in the world war. This is an astonishing phenomenon this vast influence of a people oppressed, proscribed, and scorned.

In favor of his own amendment prohibiting the States from disfranchising citizens on the ground of color, Mr. Henderson said: "I propose to make the State governments republican in fact, as they are in theory. The States now have the power and do exclude the negroes for no other reason than that of color.

I do not see how we can very consistently talk democracy while disfranchising the better half of our citizenship-1 may not approve of the action of the women picketing the White House, but neither do I approve of what I consider the lawless action toward these women in connection with the picketing . . . ."

It is truly an "economic problem," in which not only the Negro of the South is concerned, but also the interests of free labor in every section of this country. These disfranchising enactments in that they lower the legal and economic status of the black man, also tend to lower his educational and social status.

It was plain to every one that its purpose was to evade the Fifteenth Amendment, and disfranchise the illiterate voters of one race without disfranchising those of the other. The opposition to this scheme was under the leadership of one of the ablest and most brilliant members of the bar, Judge J.B. Christman, of Lincoln County.

He considered negro suffrage the first essential of reconstruction, but he did not believe in enfranchising the colored people and disfranchising the whites.

This interpretive legislation gave a broad basis for the military government and resulted in a severe application of the disfranchising provisions of the laws. The rule of the five generals lasted in all the States until June 1868, and continued in Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Georgia until 1870.

Bingham spoke in favor of the amendment. He preferred that the disfranchising clause should be embodied in an act of Congress.