Black Bill

“ The noise from the birth-night supper grew thicker and stronger as they got nearer the Quarters. Every beat of the drum throbbed unbroken by the laughter and singing and loud-ringing talk. Breeze’s feet stepped with the time it marked, and so did Uncle Bill’s and Big Sue’s. ”

“ I do not believe that the practice of law is a 'privilege' which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government. ”

“ And then the wild flowers around—the purple ling and red bell-heather growing on the silver-gray rocks; a foxglove or two towering high above the golden-green breckans; the red star of a crane's-bill among the velvet moss. Even if she were overawed by the solitariness of the Atlantic and the gloom of the tall cliffs and their yawning caves, surely here would be a haven of peace and rest, with sunshine, and flowers, and the pleasant murmur of the stream. ”

“ No one, it seems to me, can read the debates on the Bill of Rights without reaching the conclusion that its Framers and critics well knew the meaning of the words they used, what they would be understood to mean by others, their scope and their limitations. Under these circumstances it strikes me as a charge against their scholarship, their common sense and their candor to give to the Fourth Amendment's language the eavesdropping meaning the Court imputes to it today. ”

“ I have always believed that the First Amendment is the keystone of our Government, that the freedoms it guarantees provide the best insurance against destruction of all freedom. At least as to speech in the realm of public matters, I believe that the "clear and present danger" test does not "mark the furthermost constitutional boundaries of protected expression," but does "no more than recognize a minimum compulsion of the Bill of Rights." ”

“ To-day the black man of the South has almost nothing to say as to how much he shall be taxed, or how those taxes shall be expended; as to who shall execute the laws, and how they shall do it; as to who shall make the laws, and how they shall be made. It is pitiable that frantic efforts must be made at critical times to get law-makers in some States even to listen to the respectful presentation of the black man's side of a current controversy. Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. ”

“ On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr., was born, destined to make our world a greater and more noble one. Growing up in a landscape disfigured with "Colored Only" and "White Only" signs and a society rife with other demeaning racial barriers and distinctions, Martin Luther King, Jr., sadly learned that the Constitution's guarantee of equality was denied to most black Americans. He dedicated his life to ending the injustice of racism, gracing the world with his vision of a land guided by love instead of hatred and by acceptance instead of intolerance. ”

“ It is little less than fantastic even to imagine that those who wrote our Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended to have a government that could create crimes of several separate and independent parts and then relieve the government of proving a portion of them. Of course, within certain broad limits it is not necessary for Congress to define a crime to include any particular set of elements. But if it does, constitutional due process requires the Government to prove each element beyond a reasonable doubt before it can convict the accused of the crime it deliberately and clearly defined. ”

“ And, of course, the existence of such awesome judicial power cannot be buttressed or created by relying on the word 'procedural.' Whether labeled as 'procedural' or 'substantive,' the Bill of Rights safeguards, far from being mere 'tools with which' other unspecified 'rights could be fully vindicated,' are the very vitals of a sound constitutional legal system designed to protect and safeguard the most cherished liberties of a free people. ”

“ This has not been done but so far as my studies have gone I have been surprised at the comparatively small amount of change in law and government which the overthrow of Negro rule brought about. There were sharp and often hurtful economies introduced, marking the return of property to power, there was a sweeping change in officials but the main body of Reconstruction legislation stood.
There is no doubt but that the thirst of the black man for knowledge—a thirst which has been too persistent and durable to be mere curiosity or whim—gave birth to the public free school system of the South. ”

“ I cannot consider the Bill of Rights to be an outworn 18th Century "strait jacket," as the Twining opinion did. Its provisions may be thought outdated abstractions by some. And it is true that they were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century wherever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many. ”

“ They were instructed to pay especial attention to the history of the United States during the revolutionary period. Thus, the campaign of education moved forward. The negroes gained political ascendancy in many Southern states, but were soon hurled from power, by force in some quarters, and by fraud in others. The negroes turned their eyes to the federal government for redress and a guarantee of their rights. The federal government said: 'Take care of yourselves, we are powerless to help you.' The 'Civil Rights Bill,' was declared null and void, by the Supreme Court. ”

“ Least of all do I believe that such a privilege should be accorded the House Un-American Activities Committee. For I believe that true Americanism is to be protected, not by committees that persecute unorthodox minorities, but by strict adherence to basic principles of freedom that are responsible for this Nation's greatness. Those principles are embodied for all who care to see in our Bill of Rights. They were put there for the specific purpose of preventing just the sort of governmental suppression of criticism that the majority upholds here. ”

“ The Negro’s agitation for the right to vote has made any step toward disfranchising the poor white unthinkable, for the white vote is needed to help disfranchise the blacks; the black man is pounding open the doors of exclusive trade guilds; for how can unions exclude whites when Negro competition can break a steel strike? The Negro is making America and the world acknowledge democracy as feasible and desirable for all white folk, for only in this way do they see any possibility of defending their world wide fear of yellow, brown and black folk. ”

“ We all agree that ignorant Negroes should not be entrusted with this power, but we all feel that where a Negro has been smart and industrious in getting an education and property and pays his taxes, he should be represented. Taxation without representation is just as unjust today as it was in 1776. It is just as unfair for the Negro as it is to the white man, and we all, both white and black, know this. ”

“ Are we to infer that the Federal Government is now free to compel its millions of employees permanently to waive their privilege against self-incrimination or lose their jobs? Surely private employers are not now free to compel their employees to waive this and other constitutional privileges. This might be highly satisfactory to those who believe that the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination has no proper place in our Bill of Rights. ”

“ The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.
I should be the last one to deny the patent weaknesses and shortcomings of the Negro people; I should be the last to withhold sympathy from the white South in its efforts to solve its intricate social problems. ”

“ We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? ”

“ For the righting of our wrongs we must look to the negroes in those States where they hold the balance of power—in Ohio, Indiana, Connecticut, New Jersey, and others. And think what an element we are destined to form in the body politic! In fifty years we shall be twenty-five millions; next century we shall be fifty millions. Not a drop of our blood is lost to us—the whites take care of that. If you haven’t got but a sixteenth part of black blood, you’re a negro all right. ”

“ To-day, when new and vaster problems are destined to strain every fibre of the national mind and soul, would it not be well to count this legacy honestly and carefully? For this much all men know: despite compromise, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary. ”

“ Why is it that when
even so talented a negro as Frederick Douglass who, curiously enough, in the estimation of
Senator Ingalls, is “greater by his Caucasian reënforcement than by his African blood,” is to
be provided for, he is given either an office in a disfranchised community in the United States
or a mission to a black Republic? How much are negro lawyers and doctors at the North
patronized by white clients or patients? Are blacks freely admitted there to the various social
and religious organizations that effect so much for this world and the next? ”

“ Now, under the elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the noblest temples. Aroused by the American Anti-slavery Society, the very white men who had forgotten and denied the claim of the black man to the rights of humanity, now thunder that claim at every gate, from cottage to capitol, from school-house to university, from the railroad carriage to the house of God. He has a place at their firesides, a place in their hearts—the man whom they once cruelly hated for his color. ”

“ The Civil Rights Bill passed by Congress is almost a dead letter, and many of the rebel judges declare it unconstitutional. The States having relapsed into the hands of the late slave-holders, and they becoming the executioners of the law, the blacks cannot look for justice at their hands. The negro must be placed in a position to protect himself. How shall that be done? We answer, the only thing to save him is the ballot. Liberty without equality is no boon. Talk not of civil without political emancipation! ”

“ The Negro had stepped so far into new economic freedom that he could never be put back into slavery; and he had widened democracy to include not only a goodly and increasing number of his own group but the mass of the poor white South. The economic results of Negro suffrage were so great during the years from 1865 to 1876 that they have never been overthrown. The Freedmen’s Bureau came virtually to an end in 1869. ”

“ In the face of this showing, let me quote from an editorial 135in the Chicago Tribune, one of the most powerful and a usually conservative journal, charging that the negro vote is suppressed and miscounted. It says:
“The trouble is, the blacks will not fight for themselves. White men, or Indians, situated as the negroes, would have made the rivers of the South run red with blood before they would submit to the usurpations and wrongs with which the black passively endure. Oppressed by generations of slavery, the negroes are non-combatants. They will not shoot and burn for their rights.” ”

“ There were two results which flowed from this system, viz.: robbing the families of these Negroes of the barest comforts of life, and destroying the confidence of the Negro in the blessings and benefits of freedom. No man—no race of men—could endure such blighting influences for any length of time.
Moreover the experiences of the Negroes in voting had not been extensive, and a sudden curtailing and abridgment of their rights was a shock to their confidence in the government under which they lived, and in the people by which they were surrounded. ”

“ When he was eliminated from the field of politics by state constitutions, adopted for that sole purpose, it was our hope and prayer that he would at least find some compensation for the wrong in safety from the mob and in the enjoyment of that peace which should attend every law abiding citizen, whether white or black. Our hopes have not been realized and we are forced to the conclusion that the brutal treatment of the Negro is not due to the fact that he was in politics. ”

“ Through the pressure of the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against “the South” is unjust ”