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By Root 1292 0

with white dignitaries and advising an assemblage made up largely of former slaves how to exercise their newly won rights as free men and citizens. The transition in the lives of the Simms brothers was no more extraordinary, however, than the political era which this and scores of similar meetings helped to launch. Neither white nor black spokesmen were oblivious to the implications. “Yes, we will be a power that will be felt in this country for all time to come,” a black newspaper proclaimed, while a former Confederate official admitted as much as he surveyed the dim political scene: “The registration of voters shows that the political power will be in the hands of our late slaves. What shame! What humiliation for us. Would it not be better to take up arms and defend ourselves to the last against such infamy.”85

With the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in March 1867, what came to be known as Radical or Congressional Reconstruction was under way. Until a popularly elected convention had framed a constitution acceptable to Congress, each of the unreconstructed southern states would remain under military rule. What made this proposed reconstruction “radical” was the stipulation that both races would vote for delegates to the conventions and no constitution would be acceptable unless it provided for black suffrage. Throughout the South, boards of registrars, usually composed of two whites and one black, began the process of enrolling qualified voters. With thousands of whites unable to qualify because of their roles in the Confederacy and still others refusing to register, the results were expected but no less startling. Of the 1,363,000 registered voters in the forthcoming elections, more than half of them—703,000—would be blacks, and they formed a majority of the electorate in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. When these figures were translated into local and county statistics, the results were sufficient to drive whites into even deeper despair. “Registration has closed here placing the negroes in a majority,” a white resident of Savannah informed a business client, who was traveling in Europe. “I hope we shall be able to control them. If not, what a terrible prospect! You will probably find us in the throes of that revolution when you return.”86

While canvassing Georgia and South Carolina for the Republican Party, Henry M. Turner expressed grave concern over how many of his people would exercise their new political power. The problem, as he discerned it, was not so much political apathy as the “foolish idea” that political involvement might compound their already precarious economic situation. Rather than take such risks, they would leave political matters to their “white friends and colored leaders.”

The result is that hundreds declare they will not register; others say, they do not care to either register or vote until things are more settled; others, again, say they cannot lose the time just now, crops are being laid by, and for every day they lose, from three to five dollars are deducted from their wages; while still others declare it is useless to register, for they have already been told that if they ever vote in harmony with Congress, or old Joe Brown, their throats will be cut from ear to ear …

To encourage full participation in the forthcoming elections, the Reverend Turner framed an urgent appeal to the “colored citizens” of Georgia and ordered that it be read in every AME church. More importantly, he proposed that the newly emerging black leadership in the state traverse the countryside in an effort to mobilize and register the thousands of freedmen not reached by urban rallies and newspapers. “What will it avail us for the larger cities to go right if we are to be dragged down to infamy and shame by the rural districts.” And if the men remained indifferent to these appeals, Turner urged black women, though disfranchised, to organize themselves to help get out the vote.87

From the outset of registration, black leaders had recognized the need to educate their people to the