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By Root 1347 0

insisted upon was equality before the law, in which black testimony would be admitted into the courtroom and blacks seated on the juries. If this demand often loomed the largest, that was because many black spokesmen viewed it as essential for the protection of their lives and families and the necessary base on which suffrage and the acquisition of property would rest. Even if some whites still recoiled at the thought of black testimony and jurors, black leaders also perceived that these measures were deemed far less controversial than the right to vote and hold office. After all, blacks had enjoyed for some years the right of testimony in northern states which refused to permit them to vote, and many southern whites who were uncompromising on the suffrage issue seemed willing to yield on the lesser evil of equal rights in the courtroom, if only to restore the courts to civil authority. That would simply extend to blacks a right the Constitution already specified all free citizens should enjoy. Far less acceptable to whites were the proposals made by several black conventions that the proportion of blacks on juries reflect the racial composition of the region.39

After the Virginia black convention drew up a powerful Declaration of Rights and Wrongs, Henry Highland Garnet, a prewar abolitionist who participated in the meeting as an “honorary member,” suggested a critical change in the wording. Since blacks were in no position to retaliate in the event whites refused to heed the Declaration, he thought it more respectful, “as humble petitioners,” to use the word “ask” instead of “demand” when submitting their grievances to the American people. The delegates agreed with Garnet and approved his amendment. The question raised by Garnet’s move was by no means trivial. With the many appeals, petitions, and declarations directed by these black conventions toward whites, what if no one bothered to listen and the constitutional conventions and state legislatures refused to act on even the most humbly worded requests? Few black spokesmen addressed themselves directly to this possibility, except to assure whites that they would never countenance insurrection or violence. No matter what happened to their memorial, Mississippi blacks told the forthcoming constitutional convention, “rest assured that we shall still remain your friends, and keep the Star Spangled Banner above us.” Similarly, the Colored People’s Convention in Alabama advised their people to be law-abiding, no matter what trials they might be forced to endure. “We must rather suffer wrong, if evil-minded men inflict wrong upon us than do wrong, while we seek to have those wrongs righted by law.” That same meeting rejected insurrection as “inconsistent with our history as a people, and the farthest from our desires or possible intentions.”40

While rejecting violent alternatives, black spokesmen and conventions tried to wield whatever leverage they thought they commanded to exact from native whites a recognition of their legal rights. The arguments they advanced, incorporating warnings of continued Federal intervention in the affairs of the South, revealed a certain political sagacity. In the event the constitutional conventions and legislatures rejected their demands, the white men who controlled those bodies should be prepared to pay a political price for their actions. If, for example, blacks who had loyally supported the Federal government had no right to representation, neither should whites who had lately taken up arms against the government complain of being denied representation in Congress. If blacks were deprived of the right of testimony or representation on the juries, southern whites should not expect to regain control over the judicial system. With similar shrewdness, blacks turned native white hostility to the Freedmen’s Bureau to their own advantage by suggesting to Congress that the Bureau remained an “indispensable necessity” until such time as they were in a position to protect themselves through the vote, equal justice, and the right to bear arms.41