Mary - Journeytohistory

Chapter 13Losing the Peace289ignorance, poverty, and racial inferiority were incompatible with logical and orderlyprocesses of government. Southern whites said that blacks had donenothing to warrant suffrage. But as blacks made progress in many walks of life,it became increasingly difficult to allege that they were naturally shiftless andincapable of advancement. The framers of the new suffrage laws, however, werecommitted to the complete and permanent disfranchisement of blacks regardlessof their progress. The Southern white view was summed up by J. K. Vardamanof Mississippi: "I am just as opposed to Booker Washington as a voter,with all his Anglo-Saxon re-enforcements, as I am to the coconut-headed,chocolate-colored, typical little coon, Andy Dotson, who blacks my shoes everymorning. Neither is fit to perform the supreme function of Citizenship." Southernerswould have to depend on administration of the suffrage laws to keepblacks disfranchised, for many blacks would gradually meet even the moststringent constitutional qualifications. White supremacy would require anabiding belief in racial inequality, reinforced perhaps by hatred born of bittermemories.Once blacks were disfranchised, everything else necessary for white supremacycould be done. "Vith the emergence of white Democratic primaries,from which all blacks were excluded by the rules of the party, whites plannedtheir strategy in caucuses, and the party itself became the government in theSouth. Whites solemnly resolved to keep the races completely separate, forTable 5Population 1>)' Race (white anel black) ill tile Fonner ConfederateStates ofAmerica as Shown in 1880. Whitc Rlacl.Stlllc (in thonsllnds) (in thOIlSllJlds)Alabama 662 600Ar!{ansas 592 211Florida 143 127Georgia 817 725Louisiana 455 484Mississippi 479 650North Carolina 867 531South Carolina 391 604Tennessee 1,139 403Texas 1,197 393Virginia 881 632Source: U.S. Bureau of the Cens\1s. Historical Statistics o/the United Stares. Colonial Times to 1970. BicentennialEditi'nl IPilrt 2]. Wilshington. D.C. 1975. pp. 24-37.