Disenfranchisement of african american voters

Louisiana[ edit ] With a population evenly divided between races, in there wereblack voters on the Louisiana registration rolls and about the same number of whites. The literacy test was administered by the voting registrar; in practice, they were white Democrats. Provisions in the constitution also included a grandfather clausewhich provided a loophole to enable illiterate whites to register to vote.

Louisiana[ edit ] With a population evenly divided between races, in there wereblack voters on the Louisiana registration rolls and about the same number of whites. The literacy test was administered by the voting registrar; in practice, they were white Democrats. Provisions in the constitution also included a grandfather clausewhich provided a loophole to enable illiterate whites to register to vote.

It said that "Any citizen who was a voter on January 1,or his son or grandson, or any person naturalized prior to January 1,if applying for registration before September 1,might vote, notwithstanding illiteracy or poverty.

The constitution of also required a person to satisfy a longer residency requirement in the state, county, parish, and precinct before voting than did the constitution of Disenfranchisement of african american voters This worked against the lower classes, who were more likely to move frequently for work, especially in agricultural areas where there were many migrant workers and sharecroppers.

The effect of these changes on the population of black voters in Louisiana was devastating; by black voters were reduced fromto 5, on the rolls.

Black Disenfranchisement,

Byonly blacks were registered, less than 0. Republican Daniel Lindsay Russell won the gubernatorial race inthe first Republican governor of the state since the end of Reconstruction in The election also resulted in more than 1, elected or appointed black officials, including the election in of George Henry White to Congress, as a member of the House of Representatives.

The Democrats used their power in the state legislature to disenfranchise minorities, primarily blacks, and ensure that Democratic Party and white power would not be threatened again.

In the Democrats adopted a constitutional suffrage amendment which lengthened the residence period required before registration, and enacted both an educational qualification to be assessed by a registrar, which meant that it could be subjectively applied and prepayment of a poll tax.

A grandfather clause exempted from the poll tax those entitled to vote on January 1, The effect in North Carolina was the complete elimination of black voters from voter rolls by Contemporary accounts estimated that seventy-five thousand black male citizens lost the vote.

In North Carolina and other Southern states, there were also the insidious effects of invisibility: The Readjuster Party held control from toelecting a governor and controlling the legislature, which also elected a US Senator from the state. After regaining power, Democrats changed state laws and the constitution in to disenfranchise blacks.

They ratified the new constitution in the legislature and did not submit it to popular vote. Voting in Virginia fell by nearly half as a result of the disenfranchisement of blacks.

The Border States, all slave states, also established laws requiring racial segregation between the s and s; however, disenfranchisement of blacks was never attained to any significant degree.

Most Border States did attempt such disenfranchisement during the s.

The Process of Disenfranchisement : We're History

The causes of failure to disenfranchise blacks and poor whites in the Border States, as compared to their success for well over half a century in former Confederate states, were complicated.

During the s Maryland was vigorously divided between supporters and opponents of disenfranchisement, but it had a large and increasingly educated black community concentrated in Baltimore. This city had many free blacks before the Civil War and they had established both economic and political power.

Despite support among conservative whites in the conservative Eastern Shorereferenda for bills to disenfranchise blacks failed three times inandwith the last vote being the most decisive. Many states required payment of the tax at a time separate from the election, and then required voters to bring receipts with them to the polls.

If they could not locate such receipts, they could not vote. In addition, many states surrounded registration and voting with other complex record-keeping requirements.

The poll tax was sometimes used alone or together with a literacy qualification. In a kind of grandfather clauseNorth Carolina in exempted from the poll tax those men entitled to vote as of January 1, This excluded all blacks in the State, who did not have suffrage before that date.North Carolina's Deliberate Disenfranchisement of Black Voters.

elderly, and African American voters, who were less likely to hold the required forms of photo ID, more likely to move. Voters had to put ballots for separate offices in separate boxes. A ballot for the governor's race put in the box for the senate seat would be thrown out.

Disenfranchisement brought about one-party rule in the Southern states. This meant that the Democratic nominee for any office was assured of victory in the general election, shifting the. African American voters in Atlanta, (Photo: Georgia State University Library) D espite Congress’s efforts to protect the voting rights of all U.S.

citizens in the six years after the Civil War, by state legislatures in the South had disenfranchised African Americans. Nov 19,  · Alabama today has one of the highest rates of felony disenfranchisement in the nation: An estimated percent of its citizens — and 15 percent of African-Americans — have lost the right to vote.

Such disenfranchisement policy currently excludes one in six African-American males. For example, in the elections, at least 10 states formally disenfranchised 20 percent of African-American voters due to felony convictions (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, ).

On the eve of complete Black disenfranchisement, Between and , every state in the Deep South adopted a new state constitution, explicitly for the purpose of disenfranchising blacks.