The Future of the Negro Voter in the South

Abstract

The question of the future of the Negro voter in the South breaks itself neatly into two aspects: namely, the continued expansion of the simple right to vote and the use made of the ballot by those presently enfranchised. The likelihood of continued expansion is suggested by the tremendous increase in Negro registration between 1944 and 1956. Prior to the Smith v. Allwright decision in 1944, an estimated 150,000 Negroes were qualified to vote in elections other than the all-important Deva-, ocratic primary. Today the number of Negroes qualified to vote in all Southern elections is an estimated 1,250,000, or about one quarter of the five million Negro adults living in the South in 1950. This increase is all the more remarkable since it has won a remarkable degree of acceptance by Southern whites. To be sure, this acceptance is not uniform throughout the region. Nor has it been an enthusiastic acceptance; many whites regard Negro voting as a necessary evil. Yet widespread acceptance of Negro voting even by those who deplore it is significant. Consider the newspaper account of a questionnaire mailed to candidates in the 1956 Alabama primary by the White Citizens Council. One of the questions read: Will you solicit the Negro vote? Note that even this organization conceded that there was a Negro vote to be solicited. In predicting future increases ill Negro voting, a reasonable hypothesis is that Negroes will continue to find it easy to register in those areas where they have so far encountered little opposition and will continue to have trouble registering in those areas where they have encountered difficulties heretofore. Assuming that the past is a guide to the future, the first step must be to identify those areas of permissiveness and resistance to Negro registration during the last thirteen years. In a general sense, one can say that Negroes have least difficulty registering and voting in the larger cities of the South. Southwide, from Richmond to Houston, large cities offer relatively few obstacles to Negro political activity, whereas the rural Negro often has a harder time registering. However, this must not be construed as saying that the larger the city the larger will be the percentage of Negroes twentyone and over who are registered. There is no direct relationship between the size of the city and the percentage of its potential Negro electorate which is qualified to vote. Thus, Birmingham, the largest city in Alabama, does not have so large a percentage of its Negro residents registered as do some of the smaller cities of the state. Other factors, such as the ability and vigor of Negro leadership, will have a bearing on rate of registration. Regardless of this variation in rate of participation among cities, the authors of all the