The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.5, page 663, Oct. 1900, U. of Illinois Press

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O C TO B. E R · 1 9 0 0 Our Southern friends may say that Mass., New Hampshire, and Vermont are politically solid, yes, but there is free vote and a fair count in these states and there is political discussion in every one of these states thrtou~gh out the campaign. Neither Mr. Bryan nor Mr. Roosevelt will think of going into the South during the campaign. Both know that it is useless. It is not the Negro that keeps the South in its present dead political condition. It is the intollerence of the Southern white man. It is the determination not to permit freedom of speech and freedom of action. It was this intollerance that ran the Tolbertst out tof] South Carolina a few months ago simply because they did not agree with their neighbors politically. There is no more opportunity for Negro rule in Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana under their new Constitutions than there is in Massachusetts and yet these states prefer to remain politically dead simply because the people have not learned and seemingly will not learn to shake off their old spirit of intollerance. The way that Mr. Bryan and other party leaders treat the South ought to be art insult to the South. To secure the votes of the other states there must be hard earnest work. The vote of the South they know will always be cast in a certain way no matter what the issues are and no matter whether an effort is made in the South or not. All this is not complimentary to the South, but it will never be changed till the South makes up its mind to permit free speech and free action. The intollence of the old South must go. AMd Con. t8 BTW Papers ATT. ~ R. R. Tolbert, a white Republican candidate for Congress in South Carolina, and his brother, T. P. Tolbert, set up a special voting box outside the regular polling place in Phoenix, S.C., and urged blacks who were refused the right to vote to drop in an affidavit. When the Tolberts' scheme was challenged by the Democratic candidate, violence erupted, resulting in the shooting death of the Democrat and the wounding of Tolbert, who fled for his life. Later a white mob attacked and wounded R. R. Tolbert's uncle and a nephew, who were unaware of the earlier events. Turning its wrath from the Tolberts to blacks, the mob roamed widely in Greenwood County, murdering and lynching several people. Senator Benjamin R. Tillman blamed the Tolberts for the whole affair because they had encouraged blacks to vote, but he cautioned the white citizens of Greenwood to stop the violence or federal authorities might intervene. He told the whites to leave blacks alone and ''go and kill the Tolberts....'' R. R. Tolbert's political career was ended and he left the state. (Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, z~6-5,8.) 663