Voting Rights in The United States - Removal of Exclusions - African Americans and Poor Whites

African Americans and Poor Whites

See also: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Disfranchisement after the Civil War

At the time of ratification of the Constitution, most states used property qualifications to restrict the franchise; the exact amount varied by state, but by some estimates, over half of white men were barred from voting. In some states, free men of color (though the property requirement in New York was eventually dropped for whites but not for blacks) also possessed the vote, a fact that was emphasized in Justice Curtis's dissent in Dred Scott v. Sandford:

Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.

When the 14th Amendment was passed in 1866, it guaranteed citizenship to the former slaves and changing them in the eyes of the law from three-fifths of a person to whole persons. Then, in 1869, when the 15th Amendment was passed, it guaranteed black men the right to vote with women of all races still unable to vote.

Furthermore, the year 1869 marked the beginning of "Black Codes," or state laws that restricted the freedoms of African Americans. Among those freedoms restricted was the freedom to exercise the right to vote. These restrictions were enforced by literacy tests, poll taxes, hiding the locations of the polls, economic pressures, and threats of physical violence.

The Supreme Court of North Carolina upheld the ability of free African Americans to vote before they were disfranchised by decision of the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1835. At the same time, convention delegates relaxed religious and property qualifications for whites. Alabama entered the union in 1819 with universal white suffrage provided for in its constitution. Its actions in the late 19th century disfranchised poor whites as well as blacks.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, one of three adopted in response to the American Civil War, prevented any state from denying the right to vote to any citizen on account of his race. This was primarily related to protecting the franchise of freedmen, but it also applied to non-white minorities such as Mexican Americans in Texas. The state governments under Reconstruction adopted new state constitutions or amendments designed to protect the ability of freedmen to vote. The resistance to black suffrage after the war regularly erupted into violence as groups tried to protect their power. Particularly in the South, in the aftermath of the Civil War, whites started working to limit the ability of freedmen to vote. In the 1860s, secret vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used violence and intimidation to keep freedmen in a controlled role and reestablish white supremacy. Nonetheless, black freedmen registered and voted in high numbers, and many were elected to local offices through the 1880s.

In the mid-1870s, there was a rise in more powerful paramilitary groups, such as the White League, originating in Louisiana in 1874 after a disputed election; and the Red Shirts, originating in Mississippi in 1875 and growing in North and South Carolina; as well as other "White Line" rifle clubs. They operated openly, were more organized than the KKK, and directed their efforts at political goals: to disrupt Republican organizing, turn Republicans out of office, and intimidate or kill blacks to suppress black voting. They worked as "the military arm of the Democratic Party." For instance, estimates were that 150 blacks were killed in North Carolina before the 1876 elections. Economic tactics such as eviction from rental housing or termination of employment were also used to suppress the black vote. White Democrats regained power in the South by the late 1870s. Thereafter, the legislators worked to create more complicated voter registration or election requirements, which more severely reduced black voting.

African Americans were a majority in three southern states following the Civil War, and represented over 40% of the population in four other states. While they did not elect a majority of African Americans to office during Reconstruction, whites feared and resented the political power which they exercised. After ousting the Republicans, whites worked to restore white supremacy.

From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven former Confederate states completed political suppression by ratifying new constitutions or amendments which incorporated provisions to disfranchise blacks and poor whites. These included such methods as a poll tax, record keeping, timing of registration in relation to elections, felony disenfranchisement focusing on crimes thought to be committed by African Americans, complex residency requirements, and a literacy test. Focusing on both blacks and poor whites ensured that there would be no coalition between them as had arisen in the elections of 1894, when Populist-Republican tickets wrested power away from Democrats. Prospective voters had to prove the ability to read and write the English language to white voter registrars, who in practice used subjective requirements. Blacks were often denied the right to vote on this basis. Even literate blacks were often told they had "failed" such a test, if in fact, it had been administered. On the other hand, illiterate whites were sometimes allowed to vote through a "grandfather clause" which waived literacy requirements if one's grandfather had been a qualified voter before 1866, or had served as a soldier, or was from a foreign country. As most blacks had grandfathers who were slaves before 1866, they could not use the grandfather clause exemption. Selective enforcement of the poll tax was frequently also used to disqualify black and poor white voters.

African Americans quickly began legal challenges to such provisions in the 19th century, but it was years before any were successful before the U.S. Supreme Court. Booker T. Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within constraints at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange representation for numerous legal challenges to disfranchisement. He called upon Northern allies to raise funds for the cause. The Supreme Court's upholding of Mississippi's provisions, in Williams v. Mississippi (1898), encouraged other states to follow the Mississippi plan of disfranchisement. African Americans brought other legal challenges, as in Giles v. Harris (1903) and Giles v. Teasley (1904), but the Supreme Court upheld Alabama constitutional provisions. In 1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement due to Supreme Court cases. In Guinn v. United States the Supreme Court rules that the clause is in conflict with the 15th Amendment, therefore the literacy test was unconstitutional.

From early in the 20th century, the newly established National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in organizing or supporting legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. Gradually they planned the strategy of which cases to take forward. In Guinn v. United States (1915), the first case in which the NAACP filed a brief, the Supreme Court struck down the grandfather clause in Oklahoma and Maryland. Other states in which it was used had to retract their legislation as well. The challenge was successful.

Nearly as rapidly as the Supreme Court determined a specific provision was unconstitutional, however, state legislatures developed new statutes to continue to disfranchise African Americans, minorities and poor whites. In Smith v. Allwright (1944), the Supreme Court struck down the use of state-sanctioned all-white primaries by the Democratic Party in the South. States developed still other restrictions on black voting. The NAACP continued with steady progress in legal challenges to disfranchisement and segregation. It was in 1957 that the first law to implement the 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, was passed. The Act set up the Civil Rights Commission—among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

As late as 1962, programs such as Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona attempted to stymie minority voting through literacy tests. The 24th Amendment was ratified in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes as a condition of voter registration and voting in federal elections. Full enfranchisement of citizens was not secured until after the American Civil Rights Movement gained passage by the United States Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congress passed the legislation because it found "case by case litigation was inadequate to combat widespread and persistent discrimination in voting." Activism by African Americans thus helped secure an expanded and protected franchise that benefited all Americans.

The bill provided for federal oversight, if necessary, to ensure just voter registration and election procedures. The rate of African American registration and voting in Southern states climbed dramatically and quickly, but it took years of federal oversight to work out the processes and overcome local resistance. In addition, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) that all state poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were officially declared unconstitutional as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This removed a burden on the poor.