Similar to such measures is the unwritten law of the back districts and small towns of the South, that the character of all Negroes unknown to the mass of the community must be vouched for by some white man.
Du Bois describes an informal social control mechanism in the rural South where Black strangers required white sponsorship to be accepted.
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They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.