Disfranchisement after the Civil War

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The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1870 in response to the American Civil War, prevented any state from denying the right to vote to any male citizen twenty-one years old or older on account of his race. Particularly in the South, however, many practical barriers were erected to this becoming a reality. Intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, and local rule variations created a maze which blocked many from voting.

Contents 1 Intimidation after the Civil War 1.1 Presidential election of 1872 2 Constitutional reforms 2.1 Restrictions on power 3 Ballot reform 4 Black disfranchisement 4.1 Poll taxes 4.2 Educational and character requirements 4.3 Mississippi plan 4.4 Registration labyrinth 4.5 Grandfather clause 4.6 Eight box law 5 Twentieth century 6 End of de jure segregation 7 See also 8 References

[edit] Intimidation after the Civil War

The first Ku Klux Klan (KKK) became powerful during early Reconstruction. The Klan was one of several organizations that tried to keep black citizens from using their civil rights.

Starting in 1866, the KKK tried to disfranchise blacks (keep them from voting) or keep them from participating in the government. The Klan became so powerful in the South that Congress passed laws to end it. In 1870 the strongly republican Congress passed an act imposing fines and damages for a conspiracy to deprive blacks of the suffrage.^[1]

The Force Act of 1870 (which came in effect in 1871) was an act that ended most of the KKK. In this act, the government banned the use of terror, force or bribery to prevent someone from voting because of their race. It empowered the President to employ the armed forces to suppress organizations which deprived people of rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. For such organizations to appear in arms was made rebellion against the United States and the President could suspend habeas corpus in that area. President Grant did this in parts of the Carolinas in the fall of 1871. State registrations and elections were to be supervised by United States marshals, who could command the help of military or naval forces.^[1] Eventually, KKK members were tried and thousands of Klansmen were arrested. The first Klan was almost eradicated within a year.

The Civil Rights Act of 1871 protected southern blacks from the Ku Klux Klan by providing a civil remedy for abuses then being committed in the South.

[edit] Presidential election of 1872

Main article: United States presidential election, 1872

The Force Act outran popular feeling. It came dangerously close near the practical suspension of state government in the South, and many at the North, including some Republicans, thought the latter result a greater evil than even the temporary abeyance of the black suffrage. The "Liberal Republicans" bolted. For the 1872 election they nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency, and adopted a platform declaring local self-government a better safeguard for the rights of all citizens than centralized power. The platform also protested against the supremacy of the military over the civil power and the suspension of habeas corpus, and favored universal amnesty to men at the South. Charles Sumner, Stanley Matthews, Carl Schurz, David A. Wells, and many other prominent Republicans engaged in the opposition.^[1]

Thinking their opportunity had come, the Democrats indorsed the Liberals' platform and nominees. The Republicans renominated Grant, who won in a landslide.

[edit] Constitutional reforms

Race war at the South following the abolition of slavery, new social conditions everywhere, and the archaic nature of many provisions in the old laws, induced a pretty general revision of State constitutions. New England clung to instruments adopted before the Civil War, though in most cases considerably amended. New Jersey was equally conservative, as were also Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. New York adopted in 1894 a new constitution which became operative January 1, 1895. Of the old States beyond the Mississippi River only Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota and Oregon remained content with anti-bellum instruments. Between 1864 and 1866 ten of the southern states inaugurated governments which were not recognized by Congress and had to be reconstructed. Ten of the eleven reconstruction constitutions were in turn overthrown by 1896. In a little over a generation, beginning with Minnesota, 1858, fourteen new states entered the Union, of which all but West Virginia and Nebraska retained at the end of the century their first bases of government. In some of these cases, however, copious amendments had rendered the constitutions in effect new.^[1]

[edit] Restrictions on power

As a rule the new constitutions reserved to the people large powers formerly granted to one or more among the three departments of government. Most of them placed legislatures under more minute restrictions than formerly prevailed. The modern documents were much longer than earlier ones, dealing with many subjects previously left to statutes. Distrust of legislatures was further shown by shortening the length of sessions, making sessions biennial, forbidding the pledging of the public credit, inhibiting all private or special legislation, and fixing a maximum for the rate of taxation, for state debts, and for state expenditures.

South Dakota, the first state to do so, applied the initiative and referendum, each to be set in motion by five percent of the voters, to general statutory legislation. Wisconsin provided for registering the names of legislative lobbyists, with various particulars touching their employment. The names of their employers also had to be put down. Many new points were ordered observed in the passing of laws, such as printing all bills, reading each one thrice, taking the yeas and nays on each, requiring an absolute majority to vote yea, the inhibition of "log-rolling" or the joining of two or more subjects under one title, and enactments against legislative bribery, lobbying and "riders".

While the legislature was snubbed, there appeared a quite positive tendency to concentrate responsibility in the executive, causing the powers of governors considerably to increase. The governor now enjoyed a longer term, was oftener re-eligible, and could veto items or sections of bills. By the later constitutions most of the important executive officers were elected directly by the people, and made directly responsible neither to governors nor to legislatures.

The newer constitutions and amendments paid great attention to the regulation of corporations, providing for commissions to deal with railroads, insurance, agriculture, dairy and food products, lands, prisons, and charities. They restricted trusts, monopolies, and lotteries. Modifications of the old jury system were introduced. Juries were made optional in civil cases, and not always obligatory in criminal cases. Juries of less than twelve were sometimes allowed, and a unanimous vote by a jury was not always required. Growing wealth and the consequent multiplication of litigants necessitated an increase in the number of judges in most courts. Efforts were made, with some success, by combining common law with equity procedure, and in other ways, to render lawsuits more simple, expeditious, and inexpensive.

Restrictions were enacted on the hours of labor, the management of factories, the alien ownership of land. The old latitude of giving and receiving by inheritance was trenched upon by inheritance taxes. The curbing of legislatures, the popular election of executives, civil service reform, and the creation of a body of administrative functionaries with clearly defined duties, betrayed movement toward an administrative system.^[1]

[edit] Ballot reform

Main article: Secret ballot

A stronghold of political corruption was assaulted from 1888 to 1894 by a hopeful measure known as the Australian ballot. It took various forms in different states, yet its essense everywhere was the provision enabling every voter to prepare and fold his ballot in a stall by himself, with no one to dictate, molest, or observe. Massachusetts, also the city of Louisville, Kentucky, employed this system of voting so early as 1888. Next year ten states enacted similar laws. In 1890 four more followed, and in 1891 fourteen more. By 1898 thirty-nine states, all the members of the Union but six, had taken up "kangaroo voting", as its foes dubbed it. Of these six states five were Southern.

An official ballot replaced the privately—often dishonestly—prepared party ballots formerly hawked about each polling place by political workers. The new ballot was a "blanket", bearing a list of all the candidates for each office to be filled. The arrangement of candidates' names varied in different states. By one style of ticket it was easy for the illiterate or the straight-out party man to mark party candidates. Another made voting difficult for the ignorant, but a delight to the discriminating.

The new ballot, though certainly an improvement, failed to produce the full results expected of it. The connivance of election officials and corrupt voters often annulled its virtue by devices growing in variety and ingenuity as politicians became acquainted with the reform. Statutes and sometimes constitutions went further, making the count of ballots public, ordering it carried out near the polling place, and allowing municipalities to insure a still more secret vote and an instantaneous, unerring tally by the use of voting machines.

In the North and West the tendency of the new fundamental laws was to widen the suffrage, rendering it, for males over twenty-one years of age, practically universal. Women's suffrage, especially on local and educational matters, spread more and more. Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah women voted upon exactly the same terms as men. In Idaho women sat in the legislature. There was much agitation for minority representation. Illinois set an example by the experiment of cumulative voting in the election of lower house members of the legislature.

[edit] Black disfranchisement

Nearly everywhere at the South constitutional reform involved black disfranchisement. The blacks were numerous, but their rule meant ruin. It was easy for the whites to keep them in check, as had been done for years, by bribery and threats, supplemented, when necessary by flogging and the shotgun. But this gave to the rising generation of white men the worst possible sort of a political education. The system was too barbarous to continue. The entire political system would be overwhelmed by violent methods. New constitutions which should legally eliminate most of the black vote were the alternative.^[1]

[edit] Poll taxes

In Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, proof of having paid taxes or poll taxes was (and in some northern and western states) made an indispensable prerequisite to voting, either alone or as an alternative for an educational qualification. Virginia used this policy until 1882 and resumed it again in 1902, cutting off such as had not paid or had failed to preserve or bring to the polls their receipts. Many states surrounded registration and voting with complex enactments.^[1]

[edit] Educational and character requirements

An educational qualification, often very elastic, sometimes the voter's alternative for a tax-receipt, was resorted to by Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Georgia in 1898 rejected such a device. Alabama hesitated, jealous lest illiterate whites should lose their votes. But, after the failure of one resolution for a convention, this state, too, upon the stipulation that the new constitution should disfranchise no white voter and that it should be submitted to the people for ratification, not promulgated directly by its authors as was done in South Carolina, Louisiana, and later in Virginia and Delaware, consented to a revision, which was ratified at the polls November 1901, not escaping censure for its drastic thoroughness. Its distinctive feature was the "good character clause" whereby an appointment board in each county registers "all voters under the present [previous] law" who are veterans or the lawful descendants of such, and "all who are of good character and understand the duties and obligations of citizenship."^[1]

[edit] Mississippi plan

In the above line of constitution-framing, whose problem was to steer between the Scylla of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Charybdis of black domination, viz., legally abridge the black vote so as to insure Caucasian supremacy at the polls, Mississippi led. The Mississippi plan, originating, it is believed, in the brain of Senator James Z. George, had for its main features a registry tax and an educational qualification, all adjustable to practical exigencies. Each voter must pay a poll tax of at least $2.00 and never to exceed $3.00, producing to the election overseers satisfactory evidence of having paid such poll and all other legal taxes. He must be registered "as provided by law", and "be able to read any section of the constitution of the State, to understand the same when read too him, or to give a reasonable interpretation thereof." This would be one of several literacy tests to appear. In municipal elections electors were required to have "such additional qualifications as might be prescribed by law."

This constitution was attacked as not having been submitted to the people for ratification and as violating the Act of Congress readmitting Mississippi; but the state supreme court sustained it, and was confirmed in this by the United States Supreme Court in dealing with the similar Louisiana constitution.

As a spur to black education the Mississippi constitution worked well. The Mississippi blacks who got their names on the voting list rose from 9,036 in 1892 to 16,965 in 1895. This result of the "plan" did not deter South Carolina from adopting it. Dread of black domination haunted the Palmetto State the more in proportion as her white population, led by the enterprising Benjamin R. Tillman, who became governor and then senator, got control and set aside the "Bourbons".^[1]

[edit] Registration labyrinth

So early as 1882 South Carolina passed a registration act which, amended in 1893 and 1894, compelled registration some four months before ordinary elections and required registry certificates to be produced at the polls. Other laws made the road to the ballot box a labyrinth whereing not only most blacks but some whites were lost. The multiple ballot boxes alone were a Chinese puzzle. This act was attacked as repugnant to the state and to the federal constitution. On May 8, 1895, Judge Goff of the United States Cirguit Court declared it unconstitutional and enjoined the state from taking further action under it. But in June the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Goff and dissolved the injunction, leaving the way open for a convention.

The convention met on September 10th and adjourned on December 4, 1895. By the new constitution the Mississippi plan was to be followed until January 1, 1898. Any male citizen could be registered who was able to read a section of the constitution or to satisfy the election officer that he understood it when read to him. Those thus registered were to remain voters for life. After the date named, applicants for registry must be able to both read and to write any section of the constitution or to show tax receipts for poll tax and for taxes on at least $300 worth of property. The property and the intelligence qualification each met with strenous opposition, but it was thought that neither alone would serve the purpose.

[edit] Grandfather clause

The Louisiana constitution of 1898, in place of the Mississippi "understanding" clause or the Alabama "good character" clause, enacted the celebrated "grandfather" clause. The would-be voter must be able to read and write English or his native tongue, or own property assessed at $300 or more; but any citizen who was a voter on January 1, 1867, or his son or grandson, or any person naturalized prior to January 1, 1898, if applying for registration before September 1, 1898, might vote, notwithstanding both illiteracy and poverty. Separate registration lists were provided for whites and blacks, and a longer term of residence required in state, county, parish, and precint before voting than by the constitution of 1879.

North Carolina adopted her suffrage amendment in 1900. It lengthened the term of residence before registration and enacted both educational qualification and prepayment of poll tax, only exempting from this tax those entitled to vote January 1, 1867. In 1902 Virginia adopted an instrument with the "understanding" clause for use until 1904, hedging the suffrage after that date by a poll tax. Application for registration must be in the applicant's handwriting, written in the presence of the registrar.^[1]

[edit] Eight box law

By 1882, the Democrats in South Carolina were firmly in power and the Republicans were contained to the heavily black counties of Beaufort and Georgetown. The state at the time had a large black majority and the whites feared a possible resurgence of black voters at the polls. To remove the black threat, an indirect literacy test was created by the General Assembly called the Eight Box Law. The law stipulated that there must be separate boxes for each office and that the voter had to insert the ballot into the corresponding box or it would not count. The ballots also could not have party symbols on them and they had to be of a correct size and type of paper. Many ballots were arbitrarily thrown out because they slightly deviated from the proposed requirements. Ballots would also randomly be thrown out if there were more ballots in a box than registered voters.^[2]

[edit] Twentieth century

White solidarity yielding with time, there were heard in the Carolinas, Alabama, and Louisiana, loud allegations, not always unfounded, that this side or that had availed itself of black votes to make up a deficit or turned the enginery of vote suppression against its opponents' white supporters.

Most states which overthrew black suffrage seemed glad to think of the new regime as involving no perjury, fraud, violence, or lese-constitution. Some of Alabama's spokesmen were of a different temper, paying scant heed to the federal questions involved. "The constitution of '75," they said, "recognized the Fifteenth Amendment, which Alabama never adopted, and guaranteed the negro all the rights of suffrage the white man enjoys. The new constitution omits that section. Under its suffrage provisions the white man will rule for all time in Alabama."

The North, once ablaze with zeal for the civil and political rights of the southern black, heard the march of this exultant southern crusade with equanimity, with indifference, almost with sympathy. Perfunctonary efforts were made in Congress to secure investigation black disfranchisement, but they evoked feeble response.^[1]

The Supreme Court began to overturn discrimatory election laws on constitutional grounds. The court held in Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 (1915) that an Oklahoma law that denied the right to vote to non-white citizens was unconstitutional. (Nonetheless, the majority of blacks were unable to vote in most states in the Deep South of the U.S. until the 1950s or 1960s.) The Supreme Court outlawed the white primary election in Smith v. Allwright 321 US 649 (1944).

[edit] End of de jure segregation

In January, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson met with civil rights leaders. On January 8, during his first State of the Union address, Johnson asked Congress to "let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined." On June 21, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The three were volunteers traveling to Mississippi to aid in the registration of black voters as part of the Mississippi Summer Project. The FBI recovered their bodies, which had been buried in an earthen dam, 44 days later. The Neshoba County deputy sheriff, Cecil Price and 16 others, all Ku Klux Klan members, were indicted for the crimes; seven were convicted. On July 2, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.^[3] This Act barred unequal application of voter registration requirements, but did not abolish literacy tests sometimes used to disqualify African Americans and poor white voters.

According to the United States Department of Justice, "By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act."^[4] This outlawed the requirement that would-be voters in the United States take literacy tests to qualify to register to vote.

[edit] See also

• Disfranchisement
• Electoral fraud
• Jim Crow laws
• Nadir of American race relations
• Voting Rights Act
• Voting rights in the United States

[edit] References