The Negro and the elective franchise. A series of papers and a sermon

Migration and Distribution of the Negro Population as Affecting the Elective Franchise—KELLY MILLER

Population lies at the basis of all human problems. The first command given by the Creator to the human race was to multiply and replenish the earth. The growth and expansion of the Negro population in the United States must be the controlling factor in the many complex problems to which his presence gives rise. In order to gain adequate as well as accurate knowledge on this subject, it is necessary to take a comprehensive view of its progress since its transplantation in America. It is well known that the first ship load of African slaves was landed at Jamestown, Va. in 1619. This original handful augmented by fresh importation and by its own rapid multiplication had swollen to three quarters of a million when the first Census was taken in 1790. The following table will reveal the essential facts as to the expansion of this population.

There are certain noticeable irregularities in this table, due in part to known disturbing causes, and in part to imperfections in census methods. It is thus seen that the Negro constitutes a rapidly increasing element, though a slowly diminishing minority of the total population. This relative diminution is due wholly to the influx of white immigrants, more than 14,000,000 of whom have come to our shores since 1860. If the two races should continue to grow at the same relative rate of increase as during the last decade, according to the law of diminishing ratios, it would require more than one hundred years to reduce the Negro to one-tenth of the total population. So far as any practical calculation is concerned, we may regard this as an irreducible minimum. So long as the Negro constitutes one-tenth of the entire body of the American people we may expect to have the race problem, both in its general and in its political features.

From the foundation of our government the Negro has constituted a serious political problem, mainly because of his unequal geographical distribution. If agricultural and economic conditions had been uniform, and the slaves had been evenly scattered over the whole area, the political phase of the race problem would have been far different from what it is and has been throughout our national life. The fact that the bulk of this race has been congested in one section has constituted the cause of political friction from the foundation of the Constitution till the present hour. This population persists in remaining in that section where it was most thickly planted by the institution of slavery. The center of gravity is still moving slowly towards the gulf of Mexico. Ninety-two per cent of the race is still found in the sixteen states where slavery prevailed at the outbreak of the civil war. The coastal states, from Maryland to Texas, contain three-fourths of the total number.

While there has been a steady stream of Negro immigration towards the North and West, yet it has not been sufficient to materially affect the mass tendency. It would seem, on first view, that the Negro who complains so bitterly against political restrictions in the South would rush to the freer conditions of the North as a gas from a denser to a rarer medium. But political and civil freedom offered by the North are more than off-set by industrial restrictions and by the inertia of a population devoid of the pioneer spirit. The warm blooded, warm hearted child of the tropics is chilled alike by the rigid climate and frigid social atmosphere that prevail in the higher latitudes. In all New England there are fewer Negroes than are to be found in a single county in Tennessee.

We learn from this table that there are four states in the union, each of which contains a larger number of Negroes than all the 31 free states combined. While such free states show a much more rapid decennial increase than any of the far south states, still the total increment scarcely exceeds that of the single state of Georgia. These figures reveal no mad hegira to a fairer and better land. The increase in the Northern states is due almost wholly to immigration from the South. It is entirely probable that the Negro population, left to itself, would not be a self sustaining quantity in the higher latitudes. During the last decade there was an absolute decline of the Negro population in Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and California.

The political significance of this Northern movement is out of all proportion to its absolute weight. It is only in the North that the Negro vote has dynamic power. In several of the border states, this vote is at present unhampered, but there is no guarantee of future security. In Mississippi there are 197,936 Negro males of voting age, but this potential vote does not affect the choice of a single official of that state. The black vote of that commonwealth is as completely nullified as the last two amendments had never been appended to our national constitution. On the other hand the 5,193 adult Negro males in Mich. are accounted of considerable consequence in the political equation of that state. In the Northern and Western states where men feel free to align themselves according to conviction, the two parties are so nearly even that the Negro vote constitutes the balance of power. Owing to unusual political conditions, which cannot be counted on to continue, the last three presidential elections were practically one-sided. The Republican party triumphed by a margin that far exceeded the entire Negro Contingent. It is only in several of the border states that this vote could in any way have affected the fate of presidential electors. The Negro vote, however, has been quite effective in state elections, and in the choice of congressmen. As the parties gravitate to normal conditions, the Negro vote will again become the balance of power in the controlling states of the North. At the beginning of every campaign each party feels that it has a chance of success. At such times the black vote looms up large and significant. In national affairs the colored vote usually adheres to the party of Lincoln and Sumner. As the margin between the two parties is a shifting and uncertain quantity, the rapid increase of the Negro vote in the Northern States becomes a matter of great political importance.

These figures tell their own story when we consider the normal relation between the two parties in these several states. It is also interesting to note that the Negroes in the North are found very largely in the cities. This makes this vote of considerable importance in municipal elections. There is, however, a tendency on the part of this vote to distribute itself between the two parties in purely municipal and local matters, which to a great degree neutralizes its special significance.

The most effective use that the Negro in the North can make of his political privilege is to uphold civic righteousness in municipal affairs, and to support those men and measures pledged to support the integrity of the constitution and its vital amendments.