Disenfranchisement and Lynching
Disenfranchisement
Disenfranchisement, the revocation of the right to vote, was heavily felt in the African American community, especially in the South. Many techniques were used to discourage black voters on election day.
“Southern states adopted an ‘understanding clause’ or a ‘grandfather clause,’ which entitled voters who could not pass the literacy test to vote, provided they could demonstrate their understanding of the meaning of a passage in the constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar, or were descended from someone eligible to vote in 1867, the year before blacks attained the franchise.”
J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (Yale UP, 1974) and Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan and Richard Pildes, The Law of Democracy (Foundation press, 1998).
"The Georgia poll tax probably reduced overall turnout by 16-28%, and black turnout in half."
Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 67-8
Lynching
Lynchings, a type of intimidation used to subjugate blacks, were also major problems in America. On average 187 lynchings occurred each year in the 1890's.
"My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps."
Maya Angelou, African American poet, autobiographer. Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings, Ch. 19 (1970)
Maya Angelou, African American poet, autobiographer. Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings, Ch. 19 (1970)
"Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native
African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization."
W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois (1868–1963), U.S. civil rights leader, author. "Reconstruction and Africa," vol. 2, The Seventh Son (1971).
African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization."
W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois (1868–1963), U.S. civil rights leader, author. "Reconstruction and Africa," vol. 2, The Seventh Son (1971).