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February 2020
Selector: Brooke Lowe
Voting Rights for African Americans
"A terrible and bloody Civil War freed enslaved Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1868) granted African Americans the rights of citizenship. However, this did not always translate into the ability to vote. Black voters were systematically turned away from state polling places. To combat this problem, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. It says:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Yet states still found ways to circumvent the Constitution and prevent blacks from voting. Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and intimidation all turned African Americans away from the polls. Until the Supreme Court struck it down in 1915, many states used the "grandfather clause " to keep descendants of slaves out of elections. The clause said you could not vote unless your grandfather had voted -- an impossibility for most people whose ancestors were slaves.
This unfair treatment was debated on the street, in the Congress and in the press. A full fifty years after the Fifteenth Amendment passed, black Americans still found it difficult to vote, especially in the South. "What a Colored Man Should Do to Vote", lists many of the barriers African American voters faced.
The fight for African American suffrage raged on for decades. In the 1930s one Georgia man described the situation this way: "Do you know I've never voted in my life, never been able to exercise my right as a citizen because of the poll tax, can't have a voice in my own government."
Many brave and impassioned Americans protested, marched, were arrested and even died working toward voting equality. In 1963 and 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought hundreds of black people to the courthouse in Selma, Alabama to register. When they were turned away, Dr. King organized and led protests that finally turned the tide of American political opinion. In 1964 the Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibited the use of poll taxes. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act directed the Attorney General to enforce the right to vote for African Americans.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act created a significant change in the status of African Americans throughout the South. The Voting Rights Act prohibited the states from using literacy tests and other methods of excluding African Americans from voting. Prior to this, only an estimated twenty-three percent of voting-age blacks were registered nationally, but by 1969 the number had jumped to sixty-one percent."
Electronic Journals, February 2020
- Showdown in SelmaFifty years ago, people put their lives in danger during a march to demand equal voting rights for African American. Here, Bubar recalls the Mar 7, 1965 protest led by John Lewis in Selma AL. Lewis was one of the leaders of a peaceful march to protest racist laws that kept African-Americans from voting. The marchers planned to walk 50 miles, from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery, to demand that Governor Wallace protect their right to vote.
- AFRICAN-AMERICAN VOTING RIGHTS: AN HISTORICAL STRUGGLEs the nation commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the Voting
Rights Act, African-Americans in the South face new challenges to their
voting rights and political representation. The proliferation of lawsuits
challenging majority-black congressional districts, escalating attempts to
block implementation of the "motor voter" law, and recent decisions by
the courts of appeal and the United States Supreme Court limiting the
scope of the Voting Rights Act and its application to judicial elections
threaten to undo the most effective means to date of providing representa-
tion for African-American and Hispanic voters. - THE SEQUEL: THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, THE NINETEENTH AMENDMENT, AND SOUTHERN BLACK WOMEN'S STRUGGLE TO VOTEhis essay reframes both the woman suffrage narrative and narratives of African American voting rights struggles by focusing on the experiences of southern African American women between the 1870s and the 1920s. It argues that the Fifteenth Amendment remained central to their suffrage strategy long after the failure of the “New Departure” to win court sanction caused white suffragists to abandon it. As white supremacists in the South worked at the turn of the century to disfranchise black men, leading African American suffragists such as Mary Church Terrell, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, and Adella Hunt Logan called for the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as well as the enfranchisement of black women. After the federal woman suffrage amendment was ratified in 1920, many southern African American women encountered the same barriers to voting—obstructionist tactics, threats, and violence—that black men had faced a generation earlier. In short, for aspiring African American voters in the South, the failure of the Nineteenth Amendment to secure voting rights for black women constituted a sad sequel to the failure of the Fifteenth Amendment to secure voting rights for black men.
- From Politics to Protest: African American Voting in Virginia in the Pre-Civil Rights Movement Era, 1940-1954This article uses a political developmental approach to examine African American poll-tax registration and voting in Virginia from 1940 to 1954. Using the concept of multiple orders, the article traces how changes in the state's political system of managed race relations created an opening for African American political mobilization. The Virginia Voters League (VVL), in alliance with other African American political, civic, and social organizations, conducted voter education and poll-tax payment campaigns in order foster political efficacy among the state's disenfranchised black voters. The VVL met with mixed success, affected by past political mobilizations, the impact of NAACP mobilization, and local and statewide political competition between the state's main political machine and insurgents. The VVL campaign was successful in achieving short-term victories, including the election of a few African Americans to local office. By 1954, the VVL's internal weakness coupled with the emergence of "massive resistance" stymied further black electoral mobilization through politics and made protest a more viable option for achieving political and civil rights for black Virginians. By tracing the path from politics to protest, this article shows how a political developmental approach can be successfully used to develop a nuanced understanding of the emergence of the civil rights movement and Southern politics in the pre-Brown v. Board of Education era.
- RACE, PARTISANSHIP, AND THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT (VRA): AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN TEXAS FROM RECONSTRUCTION TO THE REPUBLICAN REDISTRICTING OF 2004Clarke attempts to prove that coalition politics based upon common goals is the optional way for African-Americans to win a political contest against a dominant elite. He compares the history of African-American disenfranchisement with present day racial politics to show that the failure to organize an effective coalition has left political parties, and minorities within those parties, without a political voice.
Books and eBooks
Lincoln's Lost Legacy by Call Number: E 185.6 .T67 2008ISBN: 9780813032283Publication Date: 2008-06-08During the 1930s and 1940s, many African Americans left the Republican Party and joined ranks with the Democrats. Before this time, the few blacks actually able to exercise their franchise automatically voted for the party of Lincoln and emancipation. The resulting political realignment has had numerous and far-reaching impacts, including the 1948 election of Harry Truman. In Lincoln's Lost Legacy, Simon Topping examines how the Republican Party lost black voters, what they did to try to win them back, retain them, and why they failed. His work helps put current Republican problems with African American voters into a longer historical framework. This finely detailed look at the making of politics and policy investigates the evolving relationships between African Americans and political parties, ultimately revealing how political leaders' decisions or indifference can carry enormous repercussions for the rest of society.
African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965 by ISBN: 0585083525Publication Date: 1997-01-01"An exciting and pathbreaking collection containing many exceptionally well-written, thought-provoking, insightful essays on a subject that has never before received this concentrated attention". -- Darlene Clark Hine
Jim Crow Capital by ISBN: 9781469646732Publication Date: 2018-09-28Local policy in the nation's capital has always influenced national politics. During Reconstruction, black Washingtonians were first to exercise their new franchise. But when congressmen abolished local governance in the 1870s, they set the precedent for southern disfranchisement. In the aftermath of this process, memories of voting and citizenship rights inspired a new generation of Washingtonians to restore local government in their city and lay the foundation for black equality across the nation. And women were at the forefront of this effort. Here Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy tells the story of how African American women in D.C. transformed civil rights politics in their freedom struggles between 1920 and 1945. Even though no resident of the nation's capital could vote, black women seized on their conspicuous location to testify in Congress, lobby politicians, and stage protests to secure racial justice, both in Washington and across the nation. Women crafted a broad vision of citizenship rights that put economic justice, physical safety, and legal equality at the forefront of their political campaigns. Black women's civil rights tactics and victories in Washington, D.C., shaped the national postwar black freedom struggle in ways that still resonate today.
Minority Voting in the United States [2 Volumes] by ISBN: 9781440830242Publication Date: 2015-12-07What are the voting behaviors of the various minority groups in the United States and how will they shape the elections of tomorrow? This book explores the history of minority voting blocs and their influence on future American elections. According to current scholarship, the Caucasian population of the United States is expected to be a minority by 2042. As the white majority disappears and politics shift with the changing tide, it is important to understand the voting behaviors of the significant minority voting blocs in the United States. In this book, a variety of voting blocs are examined: African Americans, women, Native Americans, Latinos (Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans), South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis), East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans), Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, and the LGBT community. In addition to factual and historical information about the minority voting blocs, chapters also explore how Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, felon disenfranchisement laws, and voter ID laws impact a minority group's voting rights. Finally, the authors and contributors anticipate which issues are likely to influence each group's voters and affect future elections. Provides a thorough analysis of the most prominent minority voting blocks in the United States in an accessible, easy-to-understand format Uses the most current scholarship available to provide a resource for students, journalists, and scholars to examine election trends Offers the reader a wealth of background and historical information Includes a comprehensive bibliography for additional reading Delves into topics that will impact future elections
When the Letter Betrays the Spirit by ISBN: 9780739149126Publication Date: 2011-08-18When the Letter Betrays the Spirit examines the wide latitude provided to the executive branch and to the Supreme Court by the text of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing from government enforcement data, legislative history, Supreme Court rulings, the 2006 reauthorization debate on the VRA, and from the 2007 scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys under the Bush Administration, the book examines when, why, and how executive and judicial discretion facilitates violation of voting rights. Connecting Johnson to Obama, the book outlines why the executive-centered model of voting rights enforcement relegates Congress to the sidelines, and outlines why a Congress-centered approach provides the best protection against the effects of the law enforcement axiom: the law is neither self-executing nor self-interpreting. The book also examines 2008 survey results about public support for a Jim Crow-era election reform policy that would require voters to read a passage of the Constitution. Describing the civic literacy dimensions of voting rights law from Shaw v. Reno (1993) to Northwest Austin Utility v. Holder (2009), the book highlights the complicated nature of the post-racial rhetoric surrounding the 2008 election cycle and surrounding the upcoming post-2010 census redistricting cycles.
Voting Rights under Fire by ISBN: 9781440832482Publication Date: 2015-05-26With the increasing demands for changes in how we vote, the authors analyze the complications of race tied to these proposed policies through historical and contemporary challenges. Why does race play such a discursive role when it comes to the "right to vote"? Lawmakers are continuing to propose changes to voting rights policies that directly impact African Americans and the emerging Latino electorate. Ranging from issues like voter identification laws, accusations of voter fraud, and voting rights for convicted felons, this single-volume provides an in-depth analysis regarding the various racial dimensions embedded in cases of public policy. By highlighting the origination and evolution of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Voting Rights under Fire: The Continuing Struggle for People of Color demonstrates the still-prevalent issues around voting and people of color. This work will provide readers an accessible, interdisciplinary book that interconnects past and present issues involving political debates, public policy, and court decisions pertaining to race and voting rights in America. *Highlights the racial dimensions tied to the historical development of voting rights in the United States *Illustrates how contemporary voting rights developments are connected to the goal of minimizing or suppressing the African American and Latino vote *Presents the way voting rights laws continue to retrogress at the hands of lawmakers *Demonstrates the increasing salience that race plays within public policy, especially pertaining to political power
Article
- Voter ID Laws and the Ghosts of Jim Crow
The basic contours of the public discourse on voter ID laws are fairly clear. In-person voting fraud is rare. As Judge Richard Posner has concluded, restrictive voter ID laws are mainly the product of Republican legislatures targeting Democratic-leaning constituencies. Chief among those Democratic constituencies are African Americans and Latinos. The refrain of Republicans to the charge of racial discrimination is that, at worst, the laws are politically motivated — an odd justification of a potential impediment to accessing the ballot. A recent case in Texas, however, reveals the racial trappings not only of that state’s restrictive voter ID law but of the broader movement to adopt voter ID laws.
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