The mass of the disfranchised in those seven Southern States is so great that by the law of gravitation its very weight and number affect more or less adversely the status of the rest of the race in other states.
Archibald Henry Grimké: “The mass of the disfranchised in those seven Southern States is so great that by the law of gravitation its very weight…”
Editor's note · Context
Grimké discusses how the large number of disenfranchised Black individuals negatively impacts the entire race's status.
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There must be added to them this something else, this one thing needful to render them effective to save the blacks from the evil consequences of their race ignorance, and the whites from the evil consequences of their race prejudice.
But to do this, to realize on their party promises and pledges to the people, they must have votes, not mere good will which can not translate itself into effective support on election day.
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 politics is business, is the big business is it not, or ought it not to be the big business of all self governing peoples, who would maintain justice and freedom for themselves and transmit them unimpaired to their posterity?