Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!”
Editor's note · Context
This passage issues a dire warning about the catastrophic consequences of denying Black men the right to vote, equating it to racial suicide.
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The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.