Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 16

14. John L. Love, The Disfranchisement of the Negro, Occasional Papers, no. 6 (Washington, DC: American Negro Academy, 1899). (27 p.)

Criticism of the Southern states’ use of constitutional measures to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote. “The assault, under the forms of law, which is being made upon the political rights of the Negro is the symptom of an animus which has its roots imbedded in the past. It does not mark a revival, but rather the supreme desperate effort of the spirit of tyranny to compass the political subjection and consequent social degradation of the black man. Its provocation does not consist in any abnormal or perilous condition in southern communities arising from a numerical preponderance of Negroes. It is not made to meet a merely temporary emergency with the intent to return to the principles of republican government upon the advent of intelligence and wealth to the Negro. Indeed, the very intent and purpose of the assault is to prevent such an advent, in so far as human ingenuity and tyrannical violence can do so.”