Defining We the People

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Defining We the People
History in the Heartland Dec 2, 2006 David
Steigerwald

• Suffrage in American Political History

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The Idea of Suffrage in Early America

• Republican Ideals and the stake in society
• --republican meaning of independence
• --importance of property to that virtue

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The Classical Undertones of Early Exclusions

• Laborers, slaves, and women were all deemed to be
  inherently dependent
• --laborers, by definition, had no time for
  leisurely contemplation of the public good
• --women, dependent on both men and subservient
  to their impetuous nature
• --slaves, obviously dependent upon masters

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The American Condition

• Widespread property ownership ensured widespread
  suffrage
• Lack of entrenched elites opened room for
  political mobility
• Stakes argument changes for common man
• Tocquevilles prediction

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Confirming Tocquevilles PredictionThe Age of
Universal Suffrage

• Early removal of property requirements
• Fluidity of wealth in America worked against a
  stable conception of property
• Suffrage became an essential means for
  incorporating men into new communities, into the
  civic order
• Party competition after 1828

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The Age of Jackson and the Appeal to the Common
Man

• Jackson as westerner,
• self-made man,
• Indian removal

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Keyssars Period of BackslidingProving
Tocqueville Wrong

• Anti-immigrant, anti-Irish anti-Catholic
• Resistance to womans suffrage
• Narrowing the rights of free people of color
• Note that we see the classical exclusions in
  somewhat new form

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The Fall and Rise of the African-American Voter

• Radical Republicans and the Negro vote
• The Reconstruction Amendments

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AMENDMENT XV Passed by
Congress February 27, 1869. Ratified March 30,
1870. Section 1. The right of citizens of the
United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any state on
account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have
power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.
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Redemption and Disfranchisement

• The onset of segregation and the Woodward Thesis
• The arguments for disfranchisement
• Didnt faithfully reflect classical arguments
• The Lost Cause claim alone had shades of the
  dependency argument
• The appeals to negro retrogression
• The constant harping on miscegenation

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This race-baiting campaign ad (ca. 1870) implies
the dependence of the black voter on his white,
presumably Republican, patron.
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From the frontpiece of Charles Carrolls 1900
book, published by the American Book and Bible
House
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A scene from Griffiths, Birth of a Nation, which
was drawn from Thomas Dixon, Jr., The Clansman
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The Momentum of Disfranchisement

• Mississippi Plan, 1890
• Followed by So Carolina (1895) Louisiana
  (1898) NC (1900) Alabama (1901) Virginia
  (1901) Maryland (1904) Georgia (1908), with new
  twists such as the grandfather clause

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County registrations in Black Belt
Mississippi County 1890 1896 Adams 4009
342 Clairborne 2155 122 Hinds 5566 16
9 Holmes 4750 421 Lowndes 4412
98 Noxubee 4312 39 Warren 5552 293 W
ashington 9103 332 Wilkinson 2412 153
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Disenfranchisement by Selected State
1896 1904 Louisiana 133,300 5300 Alabama
181,400 3000 Mississippi 131,000 1300
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The Strange Case of Georgia --Populist
hangovers in Tom Watson --Resistance to
disfran- chisement, 1901-06 --1906
gubernatorial Clark Howell. bourbon, vs. Hoke
Smith, Progressive --The Atlanta race riot,
both stoked by race-baiting and
clinching argument for disfranchisement bill
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Suffrage and the Black Liberation Struggle

• Black voting, 1920-1944 relied on northern,
  urban voters primarily
• Post-1944
• Effects of WWII
• Smith v. Allwright (1944) outlawed white
  primary
• And, of course, the movement

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• African-American voting registration in 11
• Southern states, 1940-1960
• Year Registered of
• voters
  eligibles
• 250,000 5
• 595,000 12
• 1952 1,009,000 20
• 1956 1, 238,000 25
• 1,266,000 25
• 1,414,000 28
• Note both the expansion and the
  lull.

Donald Mathews and James Prothro, Social and
Economic Factors and Negro Voter Registration in
the South, American Political Science Review, 57
(March 1963) 24-44.
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Voter Registration as the Key to the Civil Rights
Movement

• The Voter Education Project, 1962-63

Bob Moses
James Forman
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Voter registration as guerrilla warfare
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Freedom Summer

• 1963 Birmingham Evars assassination Wallaces
  stand in the schoolhouse door
• And SNCCs complete failure in Mississippi
• Mosess November memo Just how do you
• pull off a revolution?

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Practicing non-violence
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On their way
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Sheriff Price Deputy Rainey, obviously worried.
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The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
and the 1964 Credentials Fight
Ella Baker at MFDP founding. Note the sketch of
Mickey Schwerner in the background.
Fanie Lou Hammer
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King at SelmaMaking voting rights his, Spring
1965
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Viola Liuzzos
car
James Reeb
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1965 Voting Rights Act

• Johnsons address
• The Acts key provisions
• Eliminated all tests, including poll taxes
• Justice Department to oversee registration in any
  state where fewer than 50 of adults had voted in
  1964
• States had to prove compliance before supervision
  was lifted
• States could not change registration laws without
  Justice approval

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Voter Registration Rates in the South, 1965-1988