Failure of Southern Election Methods

White men continue to disenfranchise black men while the white newspaper defends the “law abiding” white opinion.

The Petersburg. Va., Index-Appeal discussed “The Suffrage Problem” in its issue of December 29th and said:
 
“Since the fateful era of reconstruction of the Union by the restoration of the seceded States, the South has had many difficult and trying questions to deal with, but none that was more perplexing than the suffrage question, the crux of which was to solve it in such a way as to eliminate the illiterate and visions element of the “Negro” vote without violating the Constitution”
 
It continued:
 
“The tank was rendered all the more difficult because  there was  an utter lack of cooperation with the whites on the part of educated and respectable “Negroes”, who persisted in making common cause with ignorance and vice, thus obstructing  the work of suffrage reform on one hand and the mental and moral improvement of the “Negro” race on the other.”
 
What else were they to do? What else would you have done? They could not separate the issue without endangering the cause for which they contended. They stood ready to support the intelligent, law abiding white men against the ignorant and the vicious applied to black and white men, but the white men of Virginia would not have it so. White men defended ignorance and vice existing in white men and attacked not only ignorance and vice among “colored” men, but education and virtuous among the same class of people.
 
The intelligent, industrious, self-respecting colored people of this state have always stood ready to support any legitimate purification of the ballot, so long as that purification was not based upon race, color, politics or religion.
 
It then stated the conditions as they now exist, showing that the South asked to be let alone  and even this favor has not tended to simplify the situation. It said:
 
“Since the birth of those preposterous notions, a generation has passed away, and time has softened much of the rancor and resentment that issued from the war between the States, and the North now sees the situation with a clearer and a more correct apprehension of the difficulties which encompass the race question in the South, particularly with respect to suffrage and citizenship, and there is an apparent willingness to let men who stand nearest to the burdens to do the lifting. Undoubtedly that simplifies matters, but it does not solve the problem fully and satisfactorily.”
 
Then followed this strong, empathetic but true language:
 
‘Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, and, in fact, all the Southern States have passed suffrage laws directed against “Negro” suffrage, but in nearly every instance the laws have acted as boomerangs, and resulted in disenfranchising almost as many whites as Negroes. That has been almost universally true of the invention of paying taxes for any considerable time in advance as a qualification to vote. In Virginia, where the plan has just been adopted, we have ,most impressive evidence of its effect in a greatly reduced white electorate, and we now find ourselves very much in the fix of the people of New York, who imported English sparrows to destroy caterpillars, and who later were anxiously looking for some larger breed of caterpillars to destroy the English sparrows. The threat of disenfranchisement does not seem to have terrors enough to compel the white voter to part from his 1$ or $1.50 as the case may be. Indeed, many white citizens otherwise eligible to vote, eagerly embrace this convenient avenue of escape and soliciting candidates. The plan restricts suffrage, beyond the doubt, and also restricts the white electorate pari passu with suffrage”

“Failure of Southern Election Methods,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed December 7, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/153.