Reconstruction and Disfranchisement

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Reconstruction and Disfranchisement
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Revolution in public life in the South

• History and Memory
• For whites, experience of defeat and occupation
• Experience of political activity of former slaves
• Whites resolve to overthrow Reconstruction
• Never again

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White attitudes on Reconstruction

• Whites spent 10 years resisting it
• 20 years undoing it
• 60 years maintaining the post-Reconstruction
  political system

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Memory for the freedmen

• Experience of exercising political power
• Leadership Senator Hiram Revels, Blanche K.
  Bruce
• Congressman Joseph Rainey and 13 other black
  congressmen
• Governor P. B. S. Pinchback of LA
• Accomplishments

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How did Reconstruction collapse

• Fraud
• Violence, Economic Pressure
• Keep opponents from voting
• When Republicans (freedmen, white southerners, or
  northerners) dont vote, it gives southern white
  Democrats control
• Beyond that, North grows weary

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• Black population by county, 1880

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Gaining control of the state

• Once in power, a minority must consolidate its
  power
• Expel dissidents from the legislature
• Use power to write new rules
• Re-apportionment
• Use power to gain control of local governments
  appoint local officers

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How to dis-franchise

• First, have to keep people away from the polls
• Violence, threats, economic pressure, obstacles
• Fraud - stuff the ballot box, throw out votes
• Make voting hard or confusing
• Eight Box Law
• Secret Ballot both hurt illiterate voters

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Voter Registration

• Require frequent re-registration
• Register well before the election
• Remove voters from rolls, refuse to reinstate
  them
• Make registration inconvenient
• Who appoints the registrar?
• Registrars have discretion

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Voter qualifications

• Literacy Test
• Exemption Grandfather Clause Understanding
  Clause.
• These rules affect blacks and whites
• They are intended to reduce white and black voters

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More obstacles

• Poll Tax
• Paid in advance
• Paid cumulatively
• No exemption for poor whites
• Again, removes poor whites as well as blacks

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Constitutions

• Disfranchisement written into constitutions
  throughout the South in the 1890s
• Solid South is born

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Kousser questions

• What is the effect of disfranchisement?
• On Party competition?
• On voter participation?
• On African-Americans?
• Examples?
• On the political style?
• Whats wrong with factional politics?

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The Populists

• Populist challenge to the Redeemers
• Farmers Alliances in the 1890s
• Sometimes a Populist-Republican or Populist-Black
  alliance threatens Democratic rule
• Blacks sometimes can cast deciding votes
• This is unacceptable to whites

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