Chapter 13

It is only reasonable to assume that a man whose ignorance does not blind him from shooting right, can, and will, under proper instruction, which is given in prints and on the stump to all other voters, vote rightly.

(2) The first and most potent step in the direction of humiliating the Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in the hands of the Philistines.

(3) Another suggestion which may be urged in behalf of the suffrage rights of the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them. It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction period could never have existed had the white voters of the South, who were yet clothed with the elective franchise, given their countenance and affiliation to the Negro voters, instead of standing aloof from them and leaving them to be swayed by a set of _educated men_, many of whom were neither "to the manor born," nor particularly interested in the welfare of the several communities in which they operated.

(4) We must never lose sight of the fact that the welfare of the Republic is not resident altogether in the _brains_ of the voters. The _heart_ plays a very conspicuous part in the casting of a pure and salutary ballot. As between a voter possessing a pure, kind and patriotic heart but an uncultivated mind, and another endowed with all the learning of the universities, but swayed by ulterior and unpatriotic designs, one would experience little or no difficulty in making choice of the former, even though clad in a black skin.

(5) The fact that a Negro is a "non-property-holding Negro" should not militate against his right to exercise his rights of citizenship; for, many of the most useful and valuable of our voters, of both races, are "non-property-holding" voters. The fact of holding property is frequently predicated on conditions altogether fortuitous--a reverse of the wheel of fortune, a large or expensive family--a drought or flood, as well as many other contingencies all play conspicuous parts in preventing good and true citizens from accumulating property, even to the extent of an humble homestead; while fire, cyclone and flood often reduce a man of great possessions in a day to the conditions of a "non-property-holding" citizen; and did his right to vote depend on his property holding, he would be utterly bereft of it. On the contrary, it is no extraordinary thing to see a man of less than average intelligence endowed with "worldly goods" through a turn of the wheel of fortune or the expansion or contraction of a "margin," where men win or lose all on the casting of a die.

It does not seem to have occurred to many of those who are exceedingly anxious to deprive "ignorant and non-property-holding Negroes" of the ballot, that ignorance in a white man is just as vicious as ignorance in any other class of citizens; yet they go on eliminating, by laws of questionable validity, the hard working, wealth producing Negro of the South, while in most instances the ignorant, dilettante and faneant, with a white skin, is not only permitted to vote, but even protected in the exercise of the function.

Upon the whole, after mature reflection, an affirmative answer would seem to be the proper one to the foregoing proposition. Under our present Constitution, yes; the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" ought to vote.

TOPIC VI.

IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?

BY ATTORNEY R. S. SMITH.

ATTORNEY REUBEN S. SMITH.

Reuben S. Smith, attorney-at-law, No. 420 Fifth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C., was born in Jackson County, Florida, April 1, 1854. He received his early education in the common schools of Marianna, in that county, and at Howard University, Washington, D. C. Before coming to Washington he taught school for a time and in 1876 served as an alternate delegate-at-large from Florida to the National Republican Convention, held at Cincinnati, Ohio. As a resident of the national capital he served as a clerk in the United States Treasury Department, in the office of the sixth auditor and in that of the second auditor. He was also Washington correspondent of several newspapers, but after graduating from the law department of the Howard University, in 1883, was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and has since been successfully employed in the practice of his profession. He has not only established a lucrative private business, but has acted as attorney for a life insurance company and other corporations. In November, 1899, he was unanimously elected moderator of the conference of the Congregational churches of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is Superintendent of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church Sunday School.

Mr. Smith was a delegate to the National Republican Convention held at Chicago in 1880, and a special agent of the eleventh census of the United States (1890), assigned to the work of collecting the statistics of the recorded indebtedness of the State of Florida. It is therefore evident that he is a man of versatility as well as ability.--_Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States_.

The subject of this sketch also served as assistant sergeant-at-arms of the Philadelphia National Republican Convention of 1900. He has been attorney in several important cases in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, involving damage suits against large corporations, and has been generally successful. He has also been retained in many equity, real estate and contested will cases, wherein he has been equally successful. He has been almost exclusively engaged in civil practice during his experience of fourteen years as a practitioner before the Supreme Court of the District.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith are domiciled at No. 715 Second Street, Northwest, where they have resided for the past twenty years. Two children survive to them: Master Jerome Bonaparte, a student at Howard University and Miss Rosa Virginia, a pupil in the Washington High School.

At first glance the above question would seem to be fully answered with one word comprising but two letters, namely, N-o. And yet, upon second thought, it will be seen that that answer would not apply, for the reason that the alleged criminal Negro seldom reaches a court-house in the South before alleged summary justice is visited upon him by an unreasoning Judge Lynch.

The fact that the question is asked whether the criminal Negro is justly dealt with in the courts of the South, would imply that there is at least a doubt as to the genuineness of the justice meted out to him there. In legal phraseology, a criminal is one who has been duly convicted of crime. This being so, it would seem that my first inquiry should be, whether the Negro who has been legally ascertained to be a criminal is justly dealt with in the South, in the matter of his punishment therefor? This line of inquiry leads me into the investigation of the convict lease system which obtains in certain Southern states, and other unlawful abuses of colored criminals there.

It is not my purpose in the limited space allotted to consider this phase of the subject at great length, but rather to briefly point out its manifest injustice.

One of the greatest wrongs of the South is its convict lease system; and its lynch law, and its disfranchising statutes are like unto it. Although the emancipation proclamation, written and promulgated by the immortal Lincoln, has been operative for more than thirty-six years, yet a species of slavery still exists there, fostered and nurtured by the statutes authorizing the convict lease system. So vile became this evil in Anderson county, South Carolina, that the leading officials there denounced it as brutal and barbarous, a crime against nature and nature's God--a crime against civilization and humanity.

Some of the specific charges against the system were that these unfortunate beings, without regard to sex, were huddled together in prison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable to the convict camp. Given the worst form of human slavery plus the barbarities of prison life; add to this the horrors of a Spanish prison, and you have somewhat of an idea of the iniquitous institution of the barbarous convict lease system.

But as if compounding crime, it is asserted with many of the appearances of truth, that Negro boys and girls, upon trivial charges, are convicted and sent to the convict camp for the express purpose of securing to the lessees of convicts the benefit of their unrequited toil until they reach their majority. Thus confined among confirmed criminals they naturally partake of the character of their environments, and conceive and multiply vice and criminology. This system punishes the real criminal unjustly. The ill-gotten gain it offers furnishes the incentive to thrust the innocent into prison pens.

Then, too, it is claimed with the appearance of truth that unscrupulous white men in certain Southern localities actually trump up charges against Negro men and procure their convictions and sentence to the convict camp for the double purpose of affording the lessees the comparatively free labor of the alleged criminals and to deprive them of the right to vote. While heartily approving of such reasonable punishment as shall deter crime, I can command no language strong and severe enough to condemn in fitting terms the cruelties and deviltries heaped upon the Negro in certain sections of the South in the name and for the sake of those who profit by the convict lease system.

It is undisputed that some of those sent to the convict camp have been properly found guilty; some have been illegally convicted; some deserve proper punishment, while some, by reason of their tender years, should have been put into reformatories, where they might have been rescued from a life of crime and brought up as law-abiding citizens. Such institutions may have been intended to protect society from the dishonest and vicious and to repress crime, but they are really made hotbeds of vice; and where sufficient vitality remains in the unfortunates, they actually propagate and multiply criminals.

But if the question should become so varied as to inquire whether the Negro in the South charged with crime is justly dealt with in the courts thereof; in other words, is he afforded a fair trial there?--it could not be fully answered without taking into consideration the heinous crime with which the Negro is generally charged. There is nothing more revolting than rape, unless it be mob-rule. There is no true man, white or black, who would not rejoice to see condign punishment visited upon the brute legally proven guilty of this most diabolical crime.

The South justifies lynching on the ground that it shields the victim of the crime from the publicity to which a trial of the perpetrator would expose her. That is to say, the lynchers prefer to violate the organic law, which provides that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. They put the mob above the judicial system of the country, and arrogate to it greater power to protect the honor of the outraged female and uphold the majesty of the law than a court of justice. It is a sad reflection upon the administration of justice even to intimate that the mob which ruthlessly defies the law is better qualified to administer justice than the court established by law to try and determine the guilt or innocence of persons charged with the commission of crime.

In the dark ages of English history, it frequently happened that the person charged with the commission of crime was first executed and afterward his trial was had, and if a verdict of not guilty was found, his bones were disinterred and given a state funeral. But the Negro charged with the commission of crime in the South is frequently not granted a trial before or after execution; so that the Negro is not justly dealt with in the courts of the South, even after he has been hung, drawn and quartered, or burned.

In some instances where the Negro is fortunate enough to confront his accusers in a court in the South, the caste prejudice against him too often reduces his trial to a mere mockery of justice.

The cornerstone of the Republic is justice, to establish which, under liberty, its founders set foot upon these hostile shores in the early part of the seventeenth century. From that time to the present the slogan of every campaign, the rallying cry of every battle, has been justice in some form or other. And yet, in the alleged interest of innocence, justice, in certain localities, is often outraged, law dethroned, and mob rule exalted.

Whether or not the Negro charged with crime is justly dealt with in the courts of the South can only be answered relatively, for in some localities fair trials are granted even to Negroes charged with the commission of crime. But for the most part, it must be admitted that Negroes brought into the courts of the South accused of crime against white people are not accorded a fair trial.

The reason of this unjust dealing with the Negro in the courts of the South is not far to seek; he is looked upon as an alien; then, too, the doctrine that he has no rights which a white man is bound to respect is exploded in certain localities only in theory, for in practice it is still unmistakably prevalent.

The crying need of the times is a wholesome respect for law and order, and a righteous condemnation of mob rule everywhere. Every pulpit North and South should speak out against mob rule and lynch law. The eloquent divine in Greenville, Miss., who recently denounced with righteous indignation the damnable outrages of mob violence in that state, was as a voice crying in the wilderness. For some reason his brethren of the cloth have not seen fit to join him in a crusade against this abominable sin. If the Southern clergy could only be induced to preach against this evil occasionally, there would soon be created throughout the sin-ridden districts such a healthy public sentiment and respect for law and order that these crimes against the state would soon become things of the past; nor could there be found throughout our broad land a miscreant, who, under the influence of the spirit of lawlessness, would take the life of our Chief Magistrate; nor would there be anywhere such an illiberal public sentiment as would openly criticise our Chief Executive for dining a representative member of the race whose feasts even Jupiter did not disdain to grace.

But let us consider the alleged crime for which lynching is attempted to be justified. L. H. Perkins, Esq., of the Kansas Bar Association, in an address to its annual meeting, in July, 1901, said:

"Lord Coke observes: 'There are crimes that are not so much as to be named among Christians.' It is difficult for us in Kansas to believe that certain crimes exist; crimes against nature, practiced by force upon defenseless childhood, disclosed in criminal records of great cities; but there is one crime in Kansas that we have learned to know. It ought not to be named, much less permitted in a Christian land. The crime and its fit punishment, can scarcely be discussed; but how else can it be expunged? Shall it be by fire? Must he who writes the story of this new-born age still further shock the world and foul the fair name of America by pictures of a howling mob, profaning every law of God and man; with every bulwark of our rights thrown down, the gates of hell unchained, and passion, loose, unbridled as hurricane, roaring above the prostrate guardians of the peace, annihilating in an hour the civilization of six thousand years?

"Death in flames! Savage, bloodthirsty vengeance! Three things this savory orgy lacks: salt and sweet herbs and a good appetite.

"There is a law that in the last extremity, in the presence of impending death, all barriers are removed, all ranks are leveled, all rights are equalized. Supreme necessity is supreme law. Can it be possible that some such overmastering impulse at times dethrones the public mind, and, while the fit is on, the latent cannibal runs riot in the land? It seems it must be so; and, if it be, 'twill be until we rise to the necessity.

"We may excoriate the cannibal, but which of us will now affirm the provocation is not great? Poor, helpless woman! Why don't she learn to shoot? This monstrous crime pursues her like a nightmare. It is an ever present peril to every woman in the land. Must she shun every alley and fly from every bush lest lascivious eyes be on her and unbridled, brutal passion block her way? Of all the hobgoblins abroad in the night, in fact or fancy or in song or story, there is none so hideous as the stealthy form of the lecherous brute that leaps forth out of darkness and drags defenseless woman to her ruin.

"And can it be that we who make the laws; we who have wives and daughters and sisters and mothers who are dearer than life itself; we who honor woman, not for her strength but for the very attributes that render her the prey of force; can it be that we can make no laws that will protect her, or satisfy the public that justice will be done?

"Concede that in the sight of God the crime of rape is worse than murder, yet is it plain that the punishment should be death? In the interest of woman herself were it not better that the brutal ravisher have somewhat more to bear if he do also murder? Else would not the motive to silence forever the most dangerous witness be complete?

"I offer the suggestion of three degrees for rape--the first to cover only ravishment by brutal violence and force; the second all the intermediate grades save statutory rape, which alone shall constitute the third degree. I am no firm believer in the justice of our age of consent, and would leave corporal punishment for statutory rape to the discretion of the trial court. The terms of imprisonment as now prescribed are doubtless long enough, but let us add to them the sting and shame of the ancient whipping post. For the third degree, in the court's discretion, not more than seven lashes. For the second degree two floggings of twenty lashes each, soundly administered within twelve months. And for the first degree, three several floggings of forty lashes each within twelve months, and then castration. There is much reason in this ancient penalty, and the time has come when it should be revived. If, as some say, this morbid and unbridled passion is disease, then treat it like appendicitis--remove the cause."

Mr. Perkins is on the right track. I am glad that he neither endorses lynching nor takes stock in the absurd report from certain sections of the South that all Negroes are ravishers of white women. I think his suggested remedy against rape a good one for white and black.

But to return to the consideration of the other phase of the question, I desire to say that Mrs. Helen Douglass, the widow of the lamented Frederick Douglass, is accepted authority on the convict lease system, and consequently I am indebted to her for most of the data used in this article touching that subject. In a well prepared lecture on convict leases, Mrs. Douglass introduces her theme as follows:

"We know what happens when manufactories are shut down and a vast amount of accumulated material is suddenly thrown upon the market. For 250 years the South had been manufacturing a peculiar article; had been literally stamping this article with its own lineaments and putting it upon a market created especially for it. The war came! The manufactories were closed; the material was on hand; what should be done with it? Never in the world, perhaps, has there been a clearer demonstration of the irrevocable nature of law, as affecting society, and the awful power of habit as the sum of reiterated choice."

At the Prison Reform Convention, held in Atlanta in 1888, Dr. P. D. Sims of Chattanooga, Tenn., said that, the impoverished condition of the South succeeding the War of the Rebellion, caused it to drift into the convict lease system, for which there were many excuses, but no justification. The lessee buys from the State the discipline of prisoners solely for gain; that neither the State nor the lessee had regard to the element of reform or consideration of a philanthropic character; that although many good men were engaged in it, the system was wrong. He presented the statistics of thirty-nine State prisons, showing that in the non-leasing prisons, the annual mortality was fifteen per thousand, while in the leasing, it was sixty-four per thousand, and that in the former, escapes were but five per thousand, and in the latter, they were fifty-one per thousand. He appealed to the South to change the system.

The lease system was adopted in Georgia in 1869, both Democrats and Republicans favoring it. The first year there were 350 convicts to be hired, and the second year the number doubled. An investigation showed that one company paid nothing to the State for the labor of its convicts, and that although the law provided for a chaplain, the State had none; that convicts were worked on Sundays contrary to law, and in some instances whipped to death. The evils of the system became so flagrant that a Senator on the floor of the Senate Chamber declared that the rich and powerful were allowed to go free, while the poor white person and the ignorant Negro were shown no mercy. It was proved that even a governor of the State was himself a lessee, working State convicts for private gain, under a $37,000 bond in force until 1899, although he was the convict's only protection against the wrongs of the lessee.

The ease and facility with which colored persons were sent to the penitentiary kept a goodly supply of prisoners on hand. While it was burdensome to taxpayers to keep them within walls, it was unjust to mechanics to allow them to learn trades; ergo, they were leased out to grade streets, to work on railroads, in mines and the like, where their physical powers might be availed of, but where they could learn nothing, save yes and no, axe and hoe.