A Brief History of Voting Rights

by Cathy Holt

American blacks first voted in the 18th century. In 1784, voting rights for blacks were protected by the state constitutions of Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. Baltimore had more blacks than whites voting in elections, and African Americans not only voted – including to ratify the Constitution – but also held office. But in southern states, where the vast majority of African Americans were slaves, the right to vote was delayed by nearly two hundred years.
During Reconstruction (1865-1877), four federal civil rights bills were passed to protect the rights of freed slaves and other African-Americans. But southerners soon began to repeal state laws and ignore federal civil rights protections, devising cunning methods to circumvent the 14th and 15th Amendments.

 



The
poll tax was a fee required to vote, set high enough that most poor
people were unable to pay. Although the poll tax affected both whites
and blacks, it was disproportionately hard on blacks, just emerging
from slavery. In 1876 North Carolina enacted the first poll tax, and
other states quickly followed.


Literacy tests required a voter to demonstrate reading proficiency
before being allowed to vote. In some cases, the black test was 20
pages long, and white Democrats nearly always ruled that blacks were
illiterate. In Alabama, the test included questions such as, “Name the
rights a person has after he has been indicted by a grand jury.”


Grandfather clauses allowed an individual to vote if his father or
grandfather had been registered to vote before passage of the 15th
Amendment. Since pre-15th Amendment voting was limited to whites, this
law ensured that poor and illiterate whites, but not blacks, could vote.


Black Codes (later called Jim Crow laws) prohibited blacks from voting,
holding office, owning property, entering towns without permission,
serving on juries, or racially intermarrying. In 1875, Tennessee became
the first state to enforce racial segregation; soon schools, hospitals,
public transportation, and restaurants throughout the South became
segregated. (Congress had passed laws banning segregation, but the US
Supreme Court struck them down.)


Gerrymandering election districts made it impossible for blacks to be elected in many southern states, most notoriously Texas.


White-only primaries were established in Georgia, Louisiana, Florida,
Mississippi, and South Carolina. In 1935 the Supreme Court upheld this
system; in 1944 the Court reversed itself and struck it down.


Physical intimidation and violence included Ku Klux Klan-led lynchings,
cross burnings, church burnings, beatings, rape, and murder. In 1871,
black U.S. Rep. Robert Brown Elliott (S.C.) observed that: “the
declared purpose is to defeat the ballot with the bullet and other
coercive means.” Between 1882 and 1964, at least 3,446 black persons
were lynched.


Restrictive eligibility requirements designed to limit black voting
included requirements that a voter must reside in a state for two
years, his county for one year, and his ward or precinct for six months
before he could vote.


State constitutions were revised to remove civil rights protections
added during Reconstruction. In 1868 North Carolina’s post-war
constitution included civil rights, but 1876 amendments excluded most
blacks from voting; Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida,
Alabama, and Virginia followed North Carolina’s example.


Other restrictions to keep blacks from voting included property
ownership requirements. For example, in Alabama in 1901, a voter was
required to own land or property worth at least $300 before he could
vote (more than $6,500 today).


The modern era: Selma, Alabama


In 1957 and 1960, following civil rights upheavals, Congress passed
legislation strengthening minorities’ voting rights, and in 1963, civil
rights activists, both black and white, began efforts to register black
voters in Alabama. Though they brought potential voters by the hundreds
to the registrar’s office in Selma, they were unable to register them.
In January and February 1965, protests in Selma were met by violence
led by the sheriff, and on February 17 a march ended in the killing of
Jimmy Lee Jackson. 600 civil rights activists held a memorial march
from Selma to Montgomery on March 7. 200 state troopers on horses,
armed with tear gas, night sticks, and bull whips ordered them to turn
back. When the marchers refused, they were attacked; 17 were
hospitalized.


Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his supporters filed a federal lawsuit
requesting a permit to proceed with the march. On March 21, the march
began again, with federal troops protecting the marchers, and proceeded
to Montgomery, where a rally was held on the steps of the state
capitol. Within hours, four Ku Klux Klan members shot and killed Viola
Liuzzo, a white 39-year-old civil rights volunteer from Detroit,
Michigan, who had come to support the Alabama African-Americans. That
August Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting all
discrimination in voting laws, such as literacy tests and poll taxes.
(In 1975, Congress expanded the Voting Rights Act to protect citizens
who did not read or speak English well enough to participate in the
political process.)


It worked. According to a 1982 Bureau of the Census report, there were
22,000 African-Americans registered to vote in Mississippi in 1960; by
1966 the number had risen to 175,000. In Alabama the numbers grew from
66,000 to 250,000 and in South Carolina from 58,000 to 191,000.