Disfranchisement After Reconstruction Era - 20th Century Supreme Court Decisions

20th Century Supreme Court Decisions

Black Americans and their allies worked hard to regain their ability to exercise rights of citizens. Booker T. Washington, better known for what some called an accommodationist approach at Tuskegee Institute, called on northern backers to help finance legal challenges to disfranchisement and segregation. He raised substantial funds and also arranged for representation on some cases, such as the two for Giles in Alabama.

In its ruling in Giles v. Harris (1903), the United States Supreme Court under Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., effectively upheld such voter registration provisions in dealing with a challenge to the Alabama constitution. Its decision said the provisions were not targeted at blacks and thus did not deprive them of rights. This has been characterized as the "most momentous ignored decision" in constitutional history.

Trying to deal with the grounds of the Court's ruling, Giles mounted another challenge. In Giles v. Teasley (1904), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the disfranchising constitution. That same year the Congress refused to overturn a disputed election, and essentially sent plaintiffs back to the courts. It was not until later in the 20th century that such legal challenges on disfranchisement began to meet some success in the courts.

With the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, the interracial group based in New York began to provide financial and strategic support to lawsuits on voting issues. What became the NAACP Legal Defense Fund organized and mounted numerous cases in repeated court and legal challenges to the many barriers of segregation, including disfranchisement provisions of the states. The NAACP often represented plaintiffs directly, or helped raise funds to support legal challenges. The NAACP also worked at public education, lobbying of Congress, demonstrations, and encouragement of theater and academic writing. NAACP chapters arose in cities across the country and membership increased rapidly in the South.