Disfranchisement After Reconstruction Era

Disfranchisement After Reconstruction Era

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1870 to protect the suffrage of freedmen after the American Civil War. It prevented any state from denying the right to vote to any male citizen on account of his race.

Blacks constituted absolute majorities of the populations in Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina, and represented over 40% of the population in four other former Confederate states. Southern whites resisted the freedmens' exercise of political power, fearing black domination. During Reconstruction, blacks controlled a majority of the vote in states such as South Carolina. White supremacist paramilitary organizations, allied with the Southern Conservatives of the Democratic Party, practiced intimidation, violence and assassinations to repress and prevent blacks exercising their civil and voting rights in elections from 1868 through the mid-1870s. In most Southern states, black voting decreased markedly under such pressure, and white Democrats regained political control of Southern legislatures and governors' offices in the 1870s. As a result of a national compromise related to the controversial election in 1876, the federal government withdrew its forces from the South in 1877.

Starting with the Georgia poll tax in 1877, white Southern legislatures passed statutes that created more barriers to voting by blacks and poor whites. Results could be seen in states such as Tennessee. After Reconstruction, Tennessee had the most "consistently competitive political system in the South". A bitter election battle in 1888 marked by unmatched corruption and violence resulted in white Democrats' taking over the state legislature. To consolidate their power, they worked to suppress the black vote and sharply reduced it through changes in voter registration, election procedures and poll taxes.

From 1890 to 1908, starting with Mississippi, conservative Southern Democratic legislators created new constitutions with provisions for voter registration that effectively completed disfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites. They created a variety of barriers, including requirements for poll taxes, residency requirements, rule variations, literacy and understanding tests, that achieved power through selective application against minorities, or were particularly hard for the poor to fulfill.

The constitutional provisions survived Supreme Court challenges in cases such as Williams v. Mississippi (1898) and Giles v. Harris (1903). In practice, these provisions, including white primaries, created a maze that blocked most blacks and many poor whites from voting in Southern states for decades after the turn of the 20th century. Voter registration and turnout dropped sharply across the South. The consequences and longevity of disfranchisement can be seen at the feature "Turnout for Presidential and Midterm Elections" at the University of Texas Politics: Historical Barriers to Voting page. It shows results for Texas, the South overall, and the rest of the United States.

Disfranchisement attracted the attention of Congress, and in 1900 some members proposed stripping the South of seats related to the numbers of people who were barred from voting. In the end, Congress did not act to change apportionment. For decades, white Southern Democrats exercised Congressional representation derived from a full count of the population, but they disfranchised several million black and white citizens. Southern white Democrats comprised a powerful voting block in Congress until the mid-20th century and their representatives, re-elected repeatedly by one-party states, became senior members, controlling numerous chairmanships of important committees in both houses. Their power allowed them to defeat federal legislation against lynching, among other issues. Because of one-party control, many Southern Democrats achieved seniority in Congress and occupied chairmanships of significant Congressional committees, thus increasing their power over legislation, rules, budgets and important patronage projects.

Read more about Disfranchisement After Reconstruction Era:  Reconstruction, KKK, and Redemption, State Disfranchising Constitutions, 1890-1908, Congressional Response, 20th Century Supreme Court Decisions, Civil Rights Movement

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