A citizen without the ballot in America is in fact, whatever he may be in law, a de-citizenized man--exposed in consequence to the enmities, the jealousies, the insults and the violence of other citizens who are more fortunate in this regard.
Here, Grimké argues that lacking the right to vote effectively strips a person of their citizenship.
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And this one thing needful, I believe, the Progressive Party brings to the solution of the problem, and that it formed the underlying motive and the statesmanlike purpose of the action at Chicago last August of Theodore Roosevelt.
It reaches down to the springs of fundamental social and political changes at the South in relation to its race question, and sets in motion the healing waters of its pool of Bethesda, which will in time heal it of its sickness and cleanse…
Not at all, for they are most important, but without the ballot they are impotent to give the relief so much needed in the South.
And yet if relief is ever to come to the Negro in the South, it must come to him by the way of an opposition party, which will put an end to the political solidity of that section by introducing into it bi-party in place of its one-party…