Remember (1920)

The foundations of the present political South are built upon sand. It requires only a resolute executive in the White House and a free House of Representatives; then when the Representatives from the Southern South knock at the door, the House of Representatives has simply to say—Who votes in Mississippi, in South Carolina, in Alabama?—and to declare that upon such a basis of franchise, the so-called members of Congress have not been legally elected.

This is all. The deed is done. And the Negro is a free man.

Nor is the possibility of this so far away. A little more southern arrogance in Washington, a little more greed in the expenditure of public funds, such as occurred during the war; a little larger assumption that the South owns the United States, and the nation may awake to real Democracy.

Or, again,—suppose the “dirty foreigners” and the disfranchised Socialists and the disfranchised blacks should get together and vote together at the next election!

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Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1920. “Remember.” The Crisis. 19(6):297.