Page 1 of 1
CHAPTER NINE TINKHAM AND AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTING – Ed Sebesta 10/10/2020 Background on Tinkham here. Sumners issued a Feb. 24, 1924 press release as follows: REPRESENTATIVE SUMNEDRS OF TEXAS has made the following reply to the statement recently given to the press by Representative Tinkham of Massachusets: There is not claim that Southern States in their laws and policies are perfect. They may or may not be over-sensitive. If this statement given to the press is a fair statement, these States have no ground for complaint. But, is it a fair statement? Mr. Tinkham charges that Southern States, they are only enumerated, have constitutional and statutory provisions, the “purpose, intent and effect” of which is “to deny the right to vote, within the meaning of the Constitution, to a large number of citizens entitled to the right to vote.” In determining the culpability of these States with the disposition to be fair to them, measurement by some standard which may be accepted would be perhaps more satisfactory than an academic discussion of Constitutional power and right. Accepting Mr. Tinkham’s State, Massachusetts, which he does not criticize, as a standard, we find that the Constitution and laws of the State of Massachusetts impose upon suffrage conditions more difficult to comply with than do most of the Southern States. In Massachusets, Mr. Tinham’s own State, no person may vote except those “who can read the Constitution of the Commonwealth in English and write his name.” There reside in the State of Massachusetts many persons otherwise qualified to vote, against whose right to vote that provision puts up an insurmountable barrier. We do not question but that the State of Massachusetts has the Constitutional right to safeguard its ballot and its government to that extent. Mr. Tinkham does not question it. Nobody questions it. But it is from a State with these limitations that a Member of Congress issues forth to deliver his attack upon Southern States. He takes them alphabetically. The first is Alabama. He states correctly that the Constitution of the State of Alabama requires, in addition to a poll tax, that “the voter must read and write or possess 40 acres of land or property assessed at $300.00”. H says that requirement has for its “purpose, intent and effect to deny the right to vote, within the meaning of the Constitution, to a large number of citizens entitled to the right to vote.” It will not be seriously contended that the poll tax requirement, operative alike on all, violates any provision of the Constitution or impose any great XXXX need to get the rest of the pages from Box 71.3.4.