The History of Voting While Black
If you’re like me you dread the process of voting, and for good reason too. Maybe it’s the countless hours of research you must do on each candidate to feel comfortable with your decisions. Maybe it the frequency of how often you’re asked to go back to the polls in your district. Maybe it’s the mere thought of potentially having to stand in a long line just to exercise your right to vote. Or maybe it a concern that your vote doesn’t matter and/or won’t be counted. While we totally empathize with you, we do think it is extremely important for us to all exercise our rights to vote. To help us understand why this right is so important we first must discuss the history of voting from the lens of the African American. After which we may discuss how the ballots we cast today influences our, as well as our children’s, tomorrow. We’ll even share some of our tips & tricks for preparing to cast your ballots in today’s polls.
Indulge us for a second and let’s transport ourselves via a time capsule to set the stage for the time at hand. It’s 1865. Abraham Lincoln has just been assassinated and the “last” slaves have been freed on Juneteenth. Andrew Johnson, who strongly believes in state rights, is his successor and has required that the Confederate states pledge their loyalty to the Union, thereby giving them permission to construct their state governments and laws as they see fit. So, what do the confederate states do first? Pass laws known as black codes, that strictly govern African Americans and deny them equal rights, such as the right to vote.
As surprising as it may sound, Congress was outraged by these black codes and passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, aiming to grant African American’s the rights of citizens. But get this, African Americans weren’t even considered US citizens at that time? It wasn’t until the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, granting citizenship to everyone that was “born or naturalized in the United States”, including former slaves. Then African American men had to wait another 2 years to be afforded the right to vote with the ratification of the 15th Amendment. It not only granted African American men the right to vote, but also the right to run for government positions, as Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African American to serve in the US Congress.
However, southern states were able to find a loophole in the new amendment. Since discrimination based on race was now illegal, they enacted other discriminatory practices, such as literacy tests, poll taxes, etc., to determine the qualifications required to be able to cast a ballot. If you’re like me and never fully understood what a literacy test entailed back then, let me share a few of the questions African Americans were required to answer in order to vote:
How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?
Print a word that looks the same whether it is printed frontwards or backwards.
How many windows can be counted at the White House in Washington, D.C.?
What does a Writ of Certiorari, Writ of Error Coram Nobis, and Subpoena Duces Tecum mean?
How many seeds in a watermelon?
If you don’t believe us, just take a look at this literacy test from Louisiana and tell us if you can pass it in the comment section below.
Keep in mind if they answered just one question wrong, they would have completely failed the test. As I’m sure you can now imagine, the result of these discriminatory practices was that white males were able to remain in complete control of all government positions, giving birth to the Jim Crow era.
Fast forward to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that gave all women the right to vote. However, just like with the passage of the 15th amendment, African American women were exposed to the same discriminatory practices that their male counterparts were exposed to, aimed to discourage and/or prohibit them from exercising their right to vote.
Thankfully African Americans never accepted this, or any of the other discriminatory practices they endured, as their reality. In fact, voting rights for African Americans became the focus of the civil rights movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s. We boycotted, were hosed down with vigorous water pressures like wild animals in the street, we were bitten by dogs for sport, we were beaten relentlessly repetitively, and of course we were lynched time and time again. All for simply wanting to exercise our right to vote. However, it wasn’t until the brutal attack, also known as “Bloody Sunday”, by state and local law enforcement on peaceful protesters marching from Selma, AL to Montgomery, AL in 1965, did true momentum begin on the attainment of equal voting rights. In fact, later that year the Voting Rights Act was passed, banning literacy tests and other discriminatory practices, and then poll taxes were banned a year later during the Supreme Court ruling of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections.
In a nutshell, it took 100 years after the abolition of slavery in the US for African Americans to at least be able to vote without laws in place supporting discriminatory practices against voters. Don’t get us wrong, there are still forces out there trying to disenfranchise our right to vote. For example, a 2013 Supreme Court ruling opened the door to new restrictions, that allow states to limit early voting and require voters to show Photo ID and/or their polling cards. However, the fact that so much blood has been shed from generation to generation fuels the itty-bitty fire inside of me to at least cast the vote many of them died trying to cast.
Hopefully, this quick history on our journey to the polls encourages you to vote during your districts next election. Tune in next week as we discuss How Today’s Vote Impacts Tomorrow.
