African-American Suffrage

THE RIGHT TO vote was consistently denied to African Americans. In colonial times, the right to vote was limited to adult white males who owned property. After the United States became an independent nation, the Constitution gave the states the right to decide who could vote; at the time only white men with property could vote. Although freed African Americans could vote in four states, white working men, almost all women, and all other people of color were denied the franchise. One by one, the states abolished property requirements. Since the 1800s, democratic nations have extended suffrage to many people. The U.S. Constitution has been amended several times for this purpose. By the Civil War, most white male adults could vote, whether they owned property or not. This was due mostly to the efforts of those who championed the cause of frontiersmen and white immigrants, who in some cases had waited 14 years for citizenship and the right to vote.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, collectively known as the Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments, were passed between 1865 and 1870. These laws outlawed slavery, guaranteed citizenship, and changed former slaves, in the eyes of the law, from three-fifths of a person to a whole person, as well as extending civil rights and suffrage to these new U.S. citizens. Women would have to wait until 1920 to receive voting rights under the Nineteenth Amendment.

In 1869, the Black Codes were instituted. These were state laws that restricted the freedom of African Americans, including the right to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, hiding the location of the polls, economic pressures, physical violence, and other strategies to suppress the African-American vote were either found in the Black Codes or flowed through them. While these strategies are no longer legal, some have argued that the locations of voting machines in the 2004 election (for example, in Florida and Ohio), placed so that whites in Republican-leaning districts had short lines, and minorities in Democraticeaning districts were forced to miss work to wait in long lines, was equivalent to placing a new poll tax on minority and poor voters.

When the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted, 5 years after the Civil War, it prohibited the states from denying a citizen the right to vote because of race. The last of the Reconstruction Amendments ensured that a person's race, color, or prior history as a slave could not be used to bar that person from voting. Although, technically, after 1870 African Americans were equal before the law, racial equality was elusive. Congress imposed a legislative evolution that transformed the south. Republican legislators passed ambitious laws, approved major constitutional amendments, overhauled southern state governments, and spurred extensive change in the former Confederacy.

The most significant change that Congress made was to enfranchise African-American men. It was considered the foundation of Reconstruction policy; however, the Constitution made no statement concerning their right to vote, it left that decision to the states. While it was a noble idea to give the black man the right to vote, it had little practical effect for quite some time, as the southern states found a myriad of ways to intimidate blacks, and keep them from voting.

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