There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no "two evils" exist. In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt's attitude toward workers most realistic I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected.
In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. In the North I lived in all thirty-two years, covering eight Presidential elections. I was disfranchised by law or administration. Of my adult life, I have spent twenty-three years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. My action, however, had to be limited by the candidates' attitude toward Negroes. Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of August 4, i.e., voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils.
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