Legal right of African Americans to vote in elections
African Americans
were fully
enfranchised
in practice throughout the United States by the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
. Prior to the
Civil War
and the
Reconstruction Amendments
to the
U.S. Constitution
, some Black people in the United States had the right to vote, but this right was often abridged or taken away. After 1870, Black people were theoretically equal before the law, but in the period between the end of
Reconstruction era
and the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
this was frequently infringed in practice.
History
[
edit
]
At the founding of the country, the right to vote was restricted to "gentlemen of property and standing"; most Black people did not own enough property to vote. Removal of the property requirements, so as to enfranchise poor whites, meant that Black people would be able to vote too, so the search began for other means to disenfranchise them. Early legal acts, like the
Naturalization Act of 1790
, granted
naturalized
citizenship
to "free white person[s]...of good character", thus excluding
slaves
, free Black people,
Native Americans
,
indentured servants
, and Asians.
[1]
[2]
However, states were allowed to grant voting rights at the state level. Prior to the Civil War, free Black people had suffrage in
New York
,
New Jersey
, and
Pennsylvania
. However, the right to vote was rescinded in New Jersey (1807)
[3]
and Pennsylvania (1838).
[4]
New York State's
Constitution of 1821
imposed a heavy property ownership requirement on Black voters (only), in effect disenfranchising almost all of them.
During this time,
abolitionists
sought to end slavery, and the call for suffrage grew. The 1857
Dred Scott
decision held that persons of African heritage were not U.S. citizens. Rather than settling the issue, as President Buchanan hoped, it produced outrage and is a major item among the
causes of the Civil War
.
After the Civil War,
the Fifteenth Amendment
gave all males the vote, but in practice Black people still faced obstacles. Some of the "
Black Codes
" passed shortly after the legal abolition of slavery explicitly prevented Black people from voting. The
Enforcement Acts
increased federal penalties for voter intimidation, particularly by white terrorist groups such as the
Ku Klux Klan
.
[5]
Black people seeking suffrage were often met with violence and
disenfranchisement
after the
Reconstruction Era
ended and there were no longer federal troops enforcing Negro rights in the states of the former Confederacy. The 1873
Colfax massacre
occurred when white locals fought with Black people and federal troops over black voting in
Grant Parish, Louisiana
. In
United States v. Cruikshank
(1876), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated some of the Enforcement Acts, ruling that the federal government could only intervene to prevent discrimination by
state actors
. In
United States v. Reese
(1876), the Court upheld voting requirements, such as
literacy tests
, which do not explicitly discriminate on the basis of race.
Jim Crow laws
enforcing
legal racial segregation
at the state and local level in the
Southern United States
[6]
were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white
Democratic
-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by Black people during the Reconstruction Era.
[7]
Black people continuously worked towards
overcoming these barriers
. A group of black activists formed the
Niagara Movement
in 1905, rebuking the 1895
Atlanta Compromise
of
Booker T. Washington
and issuing a declaration that demanded
universal male suffrage
. From the Niagara Movement came the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
, formed in 1910, which pursued voting rights mostly through the courts. In
Guinn v. United States
(1915), the Supreme Court struck down a
grandfather clause
that functionally exempted only white people from literacy tests. The Court ruled against
white primaries
in
Nixon v. Herndon
(1927) and
Nixon v. Condon
(1932), upheld white primaries in
Grovey v. Townsend
(1935), and finally banned them with
Smith v. Allwright
(1944) and
Terry v. Adams
(1953). In
Breedlove v. Suttles
(1937), The Court upheld the constitutionality of a
poll tax
requirement for voting.
[5]
The
Civil Rights Movement
brought renewed attention to black voting rights. Florida voting rights activists
Harriette Moore
and
Harry T. Moore
were assassinated by the KKK in 1951. In
Gomillion v. Lightfoot
(1960) the Supreme Court struck down a plan to redraw the district lines of
Tuskegee, Alabama
, on the grounds that it would disenfranchise black voters. The
Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
, passed in 1962?1964, banned poll taxes as a precondition for voting in federal elections. The Supreme Court ruled against state poll taxes in 1966 in
Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections
.
[5]
Civil rights leaders began organized
campaigns to register black voters
, including the federally endorsed
Voter Education Project
. A particularly intense voting rights struggle in Mississippi led to the death of
Medgar Evers
in 1963 and of
three civil rights volunteers
during the
Freedom Summer
campaign in 1964. Organizers also created the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
to challenge the white-dominated
Mississippi Democratic Party
. In Alabama, the highly publicized
Selma to Montgomery marches
in 1965 met with a violent response, bringing more scrutiny to suppression of black voters. The
Voting Rights Act of 1965
prohibited a variety of discriminatory state voting practices. The Supreme Court upheld this law in the 1966 decision
South Carolina v. Katzenbach
.
[8]
Since the 1960s, the practice of
gerrymandering
?drawing the boundaries of each Congressional district, which are redone after every census, so as to maximize white and minimize Black political power?has been identified as a threat to black voting rights in the U.S.
[9]
The Supreme Court limited the
Gomillion
decision in
Mobile v. Bolden
(1980), distinguishing between racist effects and racist intent, and prohibiting only the latter. The Court ruled in
Shaw v. Reno
(1993) that if a redistricting plan is "so bizarre on its face that it is 'unexplainable on grounds other than race
'
", it must be held to a "strict scrutiny" standard under the Fourteenth Amendment.
[
further explanation needed
]
The Court has since struck down redistricting plans for racial gerrymandering in
Miller v. Johnson
(1995),
Bush v. Vera
(1996), and several more cases.
[10]
However, the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in
Shelby County v. Holder
(2013), holding that the racist practices that necessitated the law in 1965 no longer existed in 2013.
[6]
Contrary to the Court's finding, jurisdictions then proceeded to make voting more difficult, closing polling places in Black neighborhoods, and requiring an official state ID to vote, something Black voters are less likely than white voters to have, while simultaneously closing offices where the IDs could be obtained. While claiming that these measures prevented voting fraud (which multiple investigations have found to be rare in the 21st-century United States), the clear result, and arguably the clear intent, was to reduce African-American voting in Southern states.
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
Black women's suffrage movement
[
edit
]
Black women began to work for political rights in the 1830s in New York and Philadelphia.
[19]
Throughout the 19th century, black women like
Harriet Forten Purvis
,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
, and
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
worked on black civil rights, like the right to vote. Black women had to fight for racial equality, as well as women's rights. They were often marginalized because of their race and their gender.
[20]
This led to the creation of groups like the
National Association of Colored Women
. Black women gained the legal right to vote with the passage of the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
in 1920. With women gaining the vote, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, black women became a powerful voting block.
[21]
Even with having the amendment ratified Black women were kept from voting using violence and intimidation. Black women protested this in many ways. Some women such as
Indiana Little
marched to their local voting registrar office and demanded their right to vote.
[22]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Notes
- ^
Hymowitz; Weissman (1975).
A History of Women in America
. Bantam.
- ^
Schultz, Jeffrey D. (2002).
Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans
. Oryx Press. p. 284.
ISBN
9781573561488
. Retrieved
March 25,
2010
.
- ^
"The American Revolution"
.
www.nps.gov
. Retrieved
March 20,
2020
.
- ^
"Black Philadelphians Defend their Voting Rights, 1838"
.
The American Yawp Reader
. Retrieved
March 20,
2020
.
- ^
a
b
c
Swinney, Everette (1962). "Enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, 1870?1877".
Journal of Southern History
.
28#2
(2): 202?218.
doi
:
10.2307/2205188
.
JSTOR
2205188
.
- ^
a
b
Fremon, David (2000).
The Jim Crow Laws and Racism in American History
. Enslow.
ISBN
0766012972
.
- ^
Bruce Bartlett (January 8, 2008).
Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past
. St. Martin's Press. pp. 24?.
ISBN
978-0-230-61138-2
.
- ^
Finkelman, Paul (2010).
South Carolina v. Katzenbach
. Vol. 4. Dallas, Tex: Schlager Group.
ISBN
9781935306054
.
OCLC
500822815
.
- ^
Li, Michael; Royden, Laura (October 17, 2017).
"Does the Anti-Gerrymandering Campaign Threaten Minority Voting Rights?"
.
Brennan Center
.
- ^
See:
Category:United States electoral redistricting case law
- ^
Weiser, Wendy R. (June 17, 2014).
"The State of Voting in 2014"
.
Brennan Center for Justice
. Retrieved
March 27,
2022
.
- ^
Herron, Michael C.; Smith, Daniel A. (May 2019).
Race,
Shelby County
, and the Voter Information Verification Act in North Carolina
(PDF)
. Tallahassee, Florida:
Florida State University College of Law
. Retrieved
March 27,
2022
.
- ^
Hariharan, Abishek (September 5, 2018).
Shelby County v. Holder: Implications of a Weakened Voting Rights Act
. New York City:
Columbia University Law School
. Retrieved
March 27,
2022
.
- ^
Doubek, James; Inskeep, Steve (May 13, 2019).
"Black Church Leaders In Georgia On The Importance Of 'Souls To The Polls'
"
.
NPR
. Retrieved
December 6,
2021
.
- ^
Brandeisky, Kara; Tigas, Mark (November 2013).
"Which States Have Enacted Restrictions Since the Voting Rights Act Ruling?"
.
The Atlantic
. Retrieved
March 27,
2022
.
- ^
"Warning Signs: The Potential Impact of
Shelby County v. Holder
on the 2016 U.S. Election"
(PDF)
. New York City:
American Civil Liberties Union
. June 2016
. Retrieved
March 27,
2022
.
- ^
Fuller, Jaime (July 7, 2014).
"How has voting changed since Shelby County v. Holder?"
.
The Washington Post
. Retrieved
July 2,
2015
.
- ^
"Election 2016: Restrictive Voting Laws by the Numbers"
. Brennan Center for Justice
. Retrieved
December 22,
2018
.
- ^
Gordon, Ann D. (1997).
African American Women and the Vote 1837-1965
. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 2, 27.
ISBN
1-55849-058-2
.
- ^
Giddings, Paula J. (1984).
Where and When I Enter... The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
. New York: William Morrow. pp. 64?83.
ISBN
0688019439
.
- ^
Jones, Martha S.
(2020).
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
. New York: Basic Books.
ISBN
9781541618619
.
- ^
Royster, Briana Adline (2019).
"Biographical Sketch of Indiana T. Little"
.
search.alexanderstreet.com
. Alexander Street.
Archived
from the original on December 8, 2021
. Retrieved
December 8,
2021
.
Further reading
External links
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]
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