The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments / The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16

An address argues that although Black Americans are citizens with constitutional rights, in practice those rights are routinely denied under one-party Southern governments and prevailing social practices. It outlines the gap between legal equality and lived inequality, citing disfranchisement, enforced segregation in travel, restricted migration and coerced labor, unequal enforcement by federal agencies, and economic and social restraints that sustain white political and economic control. The speaker underscores Black Americans’ contributions and long-suffering patience while documenting concrete injustices and urging stronger enforcement of existing laws alongside wider moral and political support to attain actual equal treatment.