ABSTRACT
Politics and political equality are intrinsically a part of our entire discussion of the many-faceted Negro problem. This chapter deals with the franchise, political parties and political rewards. It focuses on the South, not only because this region contains the great majority of the Negro people, but because the South is the only region where Negro suffrage is a problem. In the North, on the contrary, the Negro has nowhere and never been a political issue of primary and lasting importance—except in so far as he has constituted an issue in national politics. The politically dependent American administrations have, particularly in the states and in the local communities, continuously turned out to be rather inefficient organs for carrying on public affairs and have often been corrupt. In this static social system all whites, independent of their rank in society, were significantly superior to the slaves. The Negro franchise became the symbol of the humiliation of the South.
