Free All God's Dangers by Theodore Rosengarten Page B

now. And in that way my daddy was easily handicapped. In other words, it was just a thing to keep the nigger goin the white man’s way. Let the nigger vote and turn the vote against the nigger, nigger doin it to hisself. Niggers just fell in there like pigs around their mammy suckin: votin the white man’s way. Come time to vote, white man runnin all about the settlement buyinthe niggers’ votes. Give him meat, flour, sugar, coffee, anything the nigger wanted.
    Then they disfranchised him, cut the nigger clean out from votin. The average nigger was votin the white man’s way, especially if he lived on the white man’s place. Combed in the niggers’ votes like flies. Soon as enough of that was done they kicked the nigger out, deprived him of his rights, what that they had made a sham of while he had em. What was that, votin or not votin, either way under them conditions, but keepin the nigger under their thumbs? But takin the vote away was worse: if they couldn’t just slave the nigger back like he used to be, it was pointin the nigger in that direction.
    Never did hear my daddy say nothin bout losin the vote. But I believe with all my heart he knowed what it meant. He just as well—the way he handled hisself in this votin business and other colored handled themselves, they had to come under these southern rulins. They thought they did, and the white man said they did, and that’s all there was to it. So he just stopped goin up to Chapel Ridge on votin day; stayed home or went out and done what he wanted to. But he didn’t vote no more.
    Who was behind that? I felt to an extent it was the rich white man and the poor white man, both of em, workin to take the vote away from the nigger—the big man and a heap of the little ones. The little ones thought they had a voice, but they only had a voice to this extent: they could speak against the nigger and the big man was happy for em to do it. But they didn’t have no more voice than a cat against the big man of their own color.
    As I growed to more knowledge I thought that was as bad a thing as ever happened—to disfranchise the nigger. Tellin him he didn’t have a right to his thoughts. He just weren’t counted to be no more than a dog.
    I never voted: I was right there with my neck under the yoke like the rest of em. I wanted to vote, but I didn’t want to vote if my vote weren’t no good, weren’t worth a doggone. What I goin to vote for? Just votin the other man’s way, just like sugar in the bowl for him. I seed the nigger vote till he’d vote his head off—done him no good at all. It taken a enlightened day—today it’s a new way as far as I can see. Nigger’ll vote and if it come up any flaws in it the high authorities will take the matter over, straighten thatthing out. They tell me now I can vote and I believe I could. But I been disencouraged so bad—I learnt too much about this votin after I growed up and begin to hear folks talk and seed how it was runnin regardless to how the cut went or come.
    If anybody understood, had a education enough to understand that he had a right to vote, if a colored man was really eligible to vote, if he went on his way where his book learnin teached him what was right and what was wrong in the way of votin, or just if his experience teached him to vote for who he wanted to vote for—that kicked the nigger out of votin. White man revealed in that he was afraid the nigger was gettin to be too smart to just follow his way of votin like sheep.
    Any way they could deprive a Negro was a celebration to em. “We just goin to pull the thing our way.” They didn’t definitely tell me—I was watchin and listenin. As the years come and go it leaves me with a better understandin of history.
II
    1903, I worked up at an old water gin—that was the old Clay gin up on Sitimachas Creek right where I was born and raised. Gin brush fell on