Disenfranchisement In Georgia

Mitchell condemns the Richmond Times Dispatch for inconsistencies, and says that it has "dropped to the advocacy of a national wrong."

THE RICHMOND, Va., TIMES is nothing, if it is not inconsistent. From platitudes upon the final triumph of great principles, it has dropped to the advocacy of a national wrong. It would disfranchise the citizen of color. It would legalize anarchy and commission crime. If not this, then what does its utterance mean? Under the caption “BOOKER WASHINGTON’S Mistake” it says in the issue of the 14th inst:
“A bill is pending before the Georgia Legislatures, called the Hardwick bill, which aims at disfranchising a large majority of the Negro voters of the State under some sort of pretexts concerning education and “lineal descent” whatever that can mean for a Negro. There was a large meeting of what are called “representative Negroes” held in Atlanta last week, and a memorial was signed by them to the Georgia Legislature praying that body not to pass the bill.
Booker Washington, the Negro who is at the head of the Negro industrial school at Tuskegee, Alabama, took part in the meeting and made himself very active in it.

“Disenfranchisement In Georgia,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed May 17, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1747.