Unnamed Potential Negro Voters

Bayard calls the former slaves who gather to vote for Cassius Q. Benbow "nigger voters" (204), though in fact they never get to vote. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified February 3, 1870, guaranteed adult males the right to vote regardless of "race, color or previous condition of servitude," but the story shows how white men used violence and intimidation to deny that right to blacks in Yoknapatawpha. Bayard depicts this as a victory; he also describes these black men who never get to vote as a "herd of niggers" who are being "herded" by "northern white men" (206) trying to "organize" the black population into "Republicans" (199).