WILL SENTIMENT OR REASON DETERMINE THE
       COURSE OF NEGRO VOTERS IN THIS CAMPAIGN?

                 By James L. Curtis, Esq.

              IN twenty-two states of the Union, where the
              blight  of constitutional  amendments  has
              neither eliminated nor  rendered  negligible
              the Negro vote, three hundred and twenty-
              seven electoral votes hang in the balance. to
              preponderate according to the way the
              Negro casts his vote.
    Is the fetich of Republicanism more powerful with this
class of voters, than existing conditions in the Republic, that
by every rule of reason, every code of common sense, every
law of logic demand its instant repudiation?
    Suppose it be conceded that in the dawn of Negro citi-
zenship, the race found itself obligated to the  Republican
party for right conferred in the shape of the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution, and there-
after resentfully sought to avenge itself on the Democratic
party for its attitude in opposition to the conferring of these
rights.
    Is there any reason on this account why the Negro should
further be influenced by rights granted fifty years ago, when
it is apparent that they were conferred, not as a result of the
unselfish pursuit of right and justice by its sponsors. but as a
political expedient to perpetuate itself in power, and that the
other party that opposed the conferring of those rights, con-
versely, did so, not as the result of a malevolent pursuit of
wrong and injustice, but as a political expedient to gain the
reins of power.
                         118




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 29, Num. 2

Will Sentiment or Reason Determine the Course of Negro Voters in this Campaign

L.

Volume:  29
Issue Number:  02
Page Number:  118
Date:  10/1912