Which Tactics Were Used To Prevent Hammer From Registering To Vote
After returning dwelling house from World War II, veteran Medgar Evers decided to vote in a Mississippi ballot. Merely when he and some other black ex-servicemen attempted to vote, a white mob stopped them. "All we wanted to be was ordinary citizens," Evers later related. "Nosotros fought during the state of war for America, Mississippi included. Now, after the Germans and Japanese hadn't killed us, it looked every bit though the white Mississippians would...."
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| Grave of ceremonious rights activist Medgar Evers in Arlington National Cemetery. (Wikimedia Eatables) |
The most basic correct of a denizen in a democracy is the correct to vote. Without this right, people can be easily ignored and even abused by their government. This, in fact, is what happened to African-American citizens living in the South following Civil War Reconstruction. Despite the 14th and 15th Amendments guaranteeing the civil rights of black Americans, their right to vote was systematically taken abroad by white supremacist state governments.
Voting During Reconstruction
Afterwards the Civil State of war, Congress acted to foreclose Southerners from re-establishing white supremacy. In 1867, the Radical Republicans in Congress imposed federal military rule over about of the South. Under U.S. Army occupation, the erstwhile Confederate states wrote new constitutions and were readmitted to the Marriage, just simply after ratifying the 14th Subpoena. This Reconstruction amendment prohibited states from denying "the equal protection of the laws" to U.Southward. citizens, which included the sometime slaves.
In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified. It stated that, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall non exist denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on business relationship of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
More than a half-meg black men became voters in the South during the 1870s (women did not secure the right to vote in the United states of america until 1920). For the most office, these new black voters bandage their ballots solidly for the Republican Party, the party of the Groovy Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.
When Mississippi rejoined the Matrimony in 1870, former slaves made up more than one-half of that land'south population. During the next decade, Mississippi sent ii black U.S. senators to Washington and elected a number of black land officials, including a lieutenant governor. Only even though the new black citizens voted freely and in large numbers, whites were still elected to a big majority of state and local offices. This was the pattern in almost of the Southern states during Reconstruction.
The Republican-controlled state governments in the South were hardly perfect. Many citizens complained most overtaxation and outright corruption. Just these governments brought nearly significant improvements in the lives of the former slaves. For the first time, black men and women enjoyed liberty of speech and movement, the right of a off-white trial, education for their children, and all the other privileges and protections of American citizenship. Only all this changed when Reconstruction ended in 1877 and federal troops withdrew from the old Confederacy.
Voting in Mississippi
With federal troops no longer present to protect the rights of black citizens, white supremacy quickly returned to the old Confederate states. Black voting cruel off sharply in nigh areas considering of threats past white employers and violence from the Ku Klux Klan, a ruthless secret organization bent on preserving white supremacy at all costs.
White majorities began to vote out the Republicans and replace them with Democratic governors, legislators, and local officials. Laws were soon passed banning interracial marriages and racially segregating railroad cars along with the public schools.
Laws and practices were also put in place to make certain blacks would never again freely participate in elections. Merely i trouble stood in the way of denying African Americans the right to vote: the 15th Subpoena, which guaranteed them this right. To a great extent, Mississippi led the way in overcoming the barrier presented past the 15th Amendment.
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| Hiram Rhodes Revels was the outset African American to serve in the U.S. Business firm of Representative and later on the Senate. Revels served in Congress from 1870 to 1871, representing Mississippi. (Wikimedia Commons) |
In 1890, Mississippi held a convention to write a new land constitution to replace the one in force since Reconstruction. The white leaders of the convention were clear most their intentions. "Nosotros came hither to exclude the Negro," declared the convention president. Because of the 15th Amendment, they could not ban blacks from voting. Instead, they wrote into the country constitution a number of voter restrictions making it difficult for near blacks to register to vote.
Get-go, the new constitution required an annual poll revenue enhancement, which voters had to pay for two years before the ballot. This was a difficult economic burden to place on black Mississippians, who made up the poorest function of the land's population. Many just couldn't pay it.
But the most formidable voting bulwark put into the state constitution was the literacy exam. It required a person seeking to register to vote to read a section of the state constitution and explain it to the county clerk who processed voter registrations. This clerk, who was e'er white, decided whether a citizen was literate or not.
The literacy test did not simply exclude the 60 percent of voting-age black men (nearly of them ex-slaves) who could not read. Information technology excluded well-nigh all blackness men, considering the clerk would select complicated technical passages for them to interpret. By dissimilarity, the clerk would pass whites past picking simple sentences in the country constitution for them to explain.
Mississippi also enacted a "grandfather clause" that permitted registering anyone whose grandfather was qualified to vote before the Civil War. Obviously, this benefited only white citizens. The "grandad clause" as well as the other legal barriers to black voter registration worked. Mississippi cutting the percent of black voting-age men registered to vote from more xc per centum during Reconstruction to less than 6 percent in 1892. These measures were copied by most of the other states in the South.
The Winds of Change
As a outcome of intimidation, violence, and racial bigotry in state voting laws, a mere 3 percentage of voting-historic period blackness men and women in the South were registered to vote in 1940. In Mississippi, less than 1 pct were registered. Most blacks who did vote lived in the larger cities of the South.
Past not having the power of the ballot, African Americans in the South had footling influence in their communities. They did not concord elected offices. They had no say in how much their taxes would be or what laws would be passed. They had little, if whatsoever, control over local constabulary, courts, or public schools. They, in result, were denied their rights every bit citizens.
Attempts to change this situation were met with animosity and outright violence. Merely in the 1950s, the civil rights motility developed. Facing enormous hostility, black people in the South organized to demand their rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. They launched voter registration drives in many Southern communities. This set the stage for great changes in the 1960s, but not without tragedy. Medgar Evers, the blackness veteran stopped by a white mob from voting, became a civil rights leader in his native Mississippi. Considering of his civil rights activities, he was shot and killed in front end of his home by a white segregationist in 1963.
For Word and Writing
- What legal devices did Southern states use to exclude most of their black citizens from voting? What other methods were used to stop blacks from voting?
- What was unfair about the way literacy tests were used for voter registration in the South from 1890 to 1965?
- What were the consequences to African Americans of being excluded from voting in the segregated Due south?
For Further Reading
McMillen, Neil R. Dark Journeying: Black Mississippians in the Historic period of Jim Crow. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Bail, Julian & Juan Williams. Eyes on the Prize: America'due south Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. New York: Penguin Books, 1988.
A C T I Five I T Y
Who Should Not Vote?
All states have some voting restrictions. Are they necessary? Below are v traditional restrictions on the right to vote. Grade small groups to determine whether your country should retain each of these restrictions. Before making a decision on each restriction, the grouping should hash out and write answers to these ii questions:
- What are some reasons favoring the brake?
- What are some reasons against the restriction?
After the groups have finished their work, each restriction should exist discussed and voted on by the entire class.
Restrictions on the Right to Vote
In gild to vote, you must...
A. Reside in a voting district for at least 1 month.
B. Be at least 18 years of age.
C. Not be in prison or on parole for a felony conviction.
D. Be a U.South. denizen.
E. Register to vote.
Return to Black History Month Home Page
Source: https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/race-and-voting-in-the-segregated-south
Posted by: swinkcade1947.blogspot.com
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