We must remember that if the theory of democracy is correct, the right to vote is not merely a privilege, not simply a method of meeting the needs of a particular group, and least of all a matter of recognized want or desire.
This statement emphasizes that voting is a fundamental right essential for true democracy, not just a privilege.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…