Item Information
Title
The Stanly News Herald (Albemarle, NC), Tuesday August 17, 1920
Source
The Stanly News Herald (Albemarle, NC), Tuesday August 17, 1920. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-CH
Rights
In the public domain and may be used without copyright restriction.
Type
still image
Identifier
https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/items/show/6419
Text
Those men who say that to enfranchise one hundred thousand negro women in North Carolina would put the state into the hands of negroes again are standing on a flimsy platform, for certainly the two hundred thousand white women, enfranchised would out vote one hundred thousand negro women, even were the negro women enfranchised. Here is what Senator Simmons, the man who did more than any other North Carolinian to control the voted of the negro men, says about it:
“If this amendment should be ratified, the North Carolina constitutional amendment of 1900 would operate to disenfranchise negro women to the same extent and in the same way as it now disenfranchises negro men. The educational tests of this amendment have for twenty years effectually eliminated negro men from politics in North Carolina. Why should negro women who, if enfranchised, will be subject to the same tests, fare better? If the North Carolina amendment should be held unconstitutional and inoperative, of course, regardless of what may happen with respect to the woman suffrage amendment, we would be confronted in North Carolina by unrestricted negro suffrage. No action of the state or nation with regard to the woman suffrage amendment would change or affect this result.
In short, if the North Carolina constitutional amendment stands, we are in no danger from the negro question, either male or female.
“If this amendment should be ratified, the North Carolina constitutional amendment of 1900 would operate to disenfranchise negro women to the same extent and in the same way as it now disenfranchises negro men. The educational tests of this amendment have for twenty years effectually eliminated negro men from politics in North Carolina. Why should negro women who, if enfranchised, will be subject to the same tests, fare better? If the North Carolina amendment should be held unconstitutional and inoperative, of course, regardless of what may happen with respect to the woman suffrage amendment, we would be confronted in North Carolina by unrestricted negro suffrage. No action of the state or nation with regard to the woman suffrage amendment would change or affect this result.
In short, if the North Carolina constitutional amendment stands, we are in no danger from the negro question, either male or female.