Disenfranchisement
Jim Crow Era Exclusion
- Disenfranchisement is the deliberate denial of voting rights (both the right to vote and the right to be elected).
- In the Jim Crow South, African Americans were systematically excluded from the political process through violence, poll taxes, literacy tests, and legal loopholes, despite protections in the 15th Amendment.
- After 1876, Southern white elites used violence, intimidation, and election fraud to suppress Black voting rights.
- This continued despite protections like the 15th Amendment and the Enforcement Acts.
- The Enforcement Acts (1870–1871) were federal laws designed to protect African Americans’ civil and voting rights, particularly against groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
- Supreme Court rulings weakened federal protections.
- United States v. Cruikshank (1876) and U.S. v. Reese (1875) reduced federal power to defend African American voting rights.
- These rulings enabled widespread voter suppression across the South.
Case study
United States v. Cruikshank (1876)
- Originated from the Colfax Massacre, where over 100 Black men were killed.
- The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not prosecute individuals for civil rights violations.
- This decision severely weakened the Enforcement Acts.
- It allowed white supremacist violence to go largely unpunished in the Reconstruction South.
U.S. v. Reese (1875)
- Concerned enforcement of the 15th Amendment.
- The Court ruled that the federal government could not penalize local officials for denying a Black man the right to vote unless race was explicitly cited as the reason.
- This ruling opened the door to poll taxes, literacy tests, and other racially “neutral” voter suppression tactics.
Methods of Disenfranchisement
- Apart from violence, several methods ensured the systematic exclusion of Black voters:
- Poll taxes: Required citizens to pay a fee to vote, disproportionately affecting African Americans and poor whites.
- Literacy tests: Required voters to read and interpret complex legal texts. These were unfairly administered, often failing literate Black applicants while passing illiterate white voters.
- Biased registration procedures: White officials delayed, denied, or discarded Black voter applications, using arbitrary rules or demanding excessive documentation.
- The Grandfather Clause was another method.
- White voters were exempted from literacy tests or poll taxes if their grandfathers had voted before 1867.
- This effectively disenfranchised Black Americans, whose ancestors had been enslaved.
- The Democratic Party in the South also used White Primaries, barring Black voters from primary elections and excluding them from real political decision-making.
- This persisted until the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Terry v. Adams (1953).
Case study
Louisiana Constitution of 1898
- Convention aimed at removing Black citizens from the electorate without openly violating the 15th Amendment.
- Voters required to read and write a section of the U.S. Constitution or understand it when read aloud.
- Local white registrars had total discretion to pass or fail applicants.
- In 1896, about 130,000 Black men were registered in Louisiana; by 1904, only 1,342 remained registered.
- Became a model for other Southern states like Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina.
Alabama Literacy Tests (1960s)
- In Dallas County (1961), less than 1% of eligible Black residents were registered to vote.
- Prospective voters had to answer up to 68 questions, often absurd or impossible.
- Example: “How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?”
- Example: “Name all 67 county judges in Alabama.”
- Tests were administered arbitrarily. White applicants were exempt or passed leniently, while Black applicants were routinely failed, even if educated professionals.
Tip
- The different disenfranchisement methods endured by the African Americans can be a both relevant and interesting topic to choose for your IA.
- For example, you could explore the relative weight of the different methods to explain the limited electoral participation of black Americans in a particular state or region in a given time period.
Common Mistake
Democrats and Republicans - are they the same parties as today?
- The Democratic Party in the 19th century, especially in the South, was very different from today’s Democratic Party.
- It was the party of states’ rights, agrarianism, and white supremacy, strongly supporting slavery before the Civil War and segregation afterward.
- They represented the Southern white conservative elite.
- While the name remained the same, the party’s ideology and coalition shifted dramatically in the 20th century, especially after the Civil Rights Movement.
- Starting in the 1930s with FDR’s New Deal, the Democrats grew more progressive economically.
- However, Southern segregationists still dominated the party’s ranks until the mid-20th century.
- The Republican Party, founded in 1854, began as an anti-slavery party.
- Its first major success was electing Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, which led to the Civil War.
- Afterward, Republicans were seen as the party of Union victory, abolition of slavery, and Reconstruction.
- In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Republicans also supported progressive reforms, such as regulating big business, improving labor conditions, and expanding government oversight.
Federal and Political Context
- Between 1877 and 1930, states exercised broad autonomy within the federal system, enacting Jim Crow laws while federal authorities avoided intervening in civil rights violations.
- Political alliances with Southern white Democrats allowed systemic disenfranchisement to persist.
- During the New Deal era, federal government power expanded, but Democratic leaders, especially Southern segregationists, often sidelined Black civil rights to preserve a fragile political coalition.
- Efforts to secure voting rights were deprioritized in order to maintain party unity and Southern support.
- After World War II, African American veterans such as Medgar Evers and Amzie Moore returned determined to fight segregation.
- President Truman supported their push by desegregating the military and advocating for civil rights legislation.
- These actions laid the groundwork for landmark challenges like the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision.
Note
- Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist and NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. He organized voter registration drives and fought segregation until his assassination in 1963, becoming a martyr for racial justice.
- Amzie Moore was a pioneering civil rights leader in Mississippi. He worked on voter registration, helped found local NAACP chapters, and played a key role in grassroots activism during the 1950s and 1960s.
