OF NEGRO HISTORY CARTER G. WOODSON EDITOR VOLUME VI 1921 STANFORD LIBRARY THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF NEGRO LIFE LANCASTER, PA., AND WASHINGTON, D. C. 1921 CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI VOL. VI., No. 1. JANUARY, 1921. CARTER G. WOODSON: Fifty Years of Negro Citizenship as qual- MAUGHAM'S Republic of Liberia; HAWORTH's The United States in Our Times; Fox's The American Colonization Society, 1817– VOL. VI., No. 2. APRIL, 1921. A. A. TAYLOR: Making West Virginia a Free State The Appeal of the American Convention of Abolition Societies to Anti-Slavery Groups. VOL. VI., No. 3. JULY, 1921. DAVID A. LANE, JR.: The Negro in South Africa Reports of the American Convention of Abolition Societies on Negroes and on Slavery, their Appeals to Congress, and their Ad- MOLEMA'S The Bantu, Past and Present; MUZZEY's American History; FITZPATRICK'S Autobiography of Martin Van Buren; VOL. VI., No. 4. OCTOBER, 1921. THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORYRY VOL. VI-JANUARY, 1921-No. 1 FIFTY YEARS OF NEGRO CITIZENSHIP AS QUALIFIED BY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT THE HISTORIC BACKGROUND The citizenship of the Negro in this country is a fiction. The Constitution of the United States guarantees to him every right vouchsafed to any individual by the most liberal democracy on the face of the earth, but despite the unusual powers of the Federal Government this agent of the body politic has studiously evaded the duty of safeguarding the rights of the Negro. The Constitution confers upon Congress the power to declare war and make peace, to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to coin money, to regulate commerce, and the like; and further empowers Congress "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." After the unsuccessful effort of Virginia and Kentucky, through their famous resolutions of 1798 drawn up by Jefferson and Madison to interpose State authority in preventing Congress from exercising its powers, the United States Government with Chief Justice John Marshall as the expounder of that document, 1 |