From Political Standpoint the Colored Brother is “Dressed Up With No Place To Go
Disenfranchised All Around
Offices Taken Away By Democrats and Republicans Take Away Votes in National Convention
Jan. 1, 1916
The close of this year brings strongly to the fore the presidential campaign that will begin in full blast right after 1916 dons swaddling clothes and bids a last farewell to hoary-headed and deceased 1915.
Woodrow Wilson will again head the Democratic national ticket, while it will take a seer to predict just whom the republican Richmond. The colored brother does not seem to know just where he is “at” with either party. The Democrats, in view of promises of a square deal by Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 fight, had a fine chance of permanently dividing the colored the voters of the country. Some thousands of colored voters supported the Democratic national ticket in 1912, and it was believed by many that colored men would share in political preferment.
Instead, not only segregation has been introduced into the departments and colored office holders seemingly harassed on account of their race, but certain Southern members of Congress have introduced “Jim-Crow” measures in Congress because their States have robbed the Negro of the right to vote — has come out courageously in favor of fair play for the race. All colored officeholders have been banished when their positions depended on presidential favor, and in other instances their jobs have been made uncomfortable. Despite the continued pleadings of Bishop Walers on behalf of the half of colored Democrats not one has been a presidential appointment, save the two men sent as Ministers to Liberia.
Indeed many of the colored men ardently supported the Democrats in 1912 in the belief that they would be fair to the race, would declare as did the National Independent Equal Rights League in Philadelphia several weeks ago, that would strongly oppose the reelection of President Wilson.
The Republican party has also become careless in the interest of the Negro during the past few years. The men in Congress that urge fair play for the race only form a negligible number nowadays. In the days following the election of McKinley the party had a chance to undo the work of the disenfranchisement underway in the South. The Republican National Convention in 1904 adopted at plank advocating the reduction of representation in Congress of those states that disenfranchised their colored voters. Nothing ever came from it, however. Following the last Republican Party National Convention Leaders argued that as the Democrats of the South disenfranchised colored voters in elections, the Republicans should curtail Southern representation in National Conventions. The National Committee as its meeting is here a year ago, presented a plan to reduced the representation by about 80 votes.
In the meantime, however, the United States Supreme Court, in a decision handed down by its Southern Democratic head, killed “grandfather clauses” in Southern Election Laws. Instead of planning at its recent meeting here to advise ways and means to get a much larger Republican registration in the South, it ignored the Supreme Court’s abrogation of Negro disenfranchisement and voted to ratify its determination to disenfranchise a large number of colored delegates who have attended Republican National Conventions. In other words it practically endorse souther disenfranchisement.
Meanwhile, Mr. Colored Voter is all dressed up with no place to go it seems.
Transcribed by Terrance Smith