The context of civil rights 153United States, and the Fifteenth gave African-American men the right to vote. These
amendments were ratified within five years of the war, although southern states
resisted giving freed slaves and their descendants “equal protection of the laws” over
the next 100 years.Voting Rights During Reconstruction (1866–1877), blacks in the South gained
political power through institutions such as the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Union
League. With the protection of the occupying northern army, blacks were able to vote
and even hold public office. When federal troops withdrew and the Republican Party
abandoned the South, however, blacks were almost completely disenfranchised
(denied the right to vote) through the imposition of residency requirements, poll
taxes, literacy tests, physical intimidation, and other forms of disqualification. Later
the practice known as the “white primary” allowed only whites to vote in Democratic
primary elections and, given that the Republican Party did not exist in most southern
states, blacks were effectively disenfranchised. Although most of these provisions were
claimed to be race neutral, their impact fell disproportionately on black voters. For
example, the grandfather clause, which permitted those who had voted before the war
and their descendants to vote even if they did not meet current voting requirements,
enabled illiterate whites (but not illiterate blacks) to avoid the literacy test.^9 Many states
also had “understanding” or “good character” exceptions to the literacy tests, which
gave election officials substantial discretion over who would be allowed to vote.
The collective impact of these obstacles virtually eliminated black voting. For
example, only 6 percent of blacks were registered to vote in Mississippi in 1890 and only
2 percent were registered in Alabama in 1906. After the last post-Reconstruction black
congressman left the House in 1901, 72 years passed before another African American
represented a southern district in Congress. In one Mississippi county in 1947, only 6
out of 13,000 eligible blacks were actually registered to vote. Despite the constitutional
guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, blacks had little access to
the political system in the South and they had little success in winning office at any level
in the rest of the nation.^10Jim Crow The social and economic position of blacks in the South followed a path
similar to their political fortunes. Soon after the Civil War ended, sympathetic
Republicans passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, which aimed to outlaw
segregation and provide equal opportunity for blacks. However, there were no
enforcement provisions, and when Reconstruction ended in 1877 the southern
states enacted “black codes,” or Jim Crow laws, that led to complete segregation
of the races. Then, in 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1875 Civil Rights Act
was unconstitutional because Congress did not have the power to forbid racial
discrimination in private businesses. Southern states interpreted this decision as a
signal that the national government was unconcerned about protecting the rights
of blacks.
Jim Crow laws forbade interracial marriage and mandated the complete separation
of the races in neighborhoods, hotels, apartments, hospitals, schools, and restrooms,
at drinking fountains, and in restaurants, elevators, and even cemetery plots. In cases
where it would have been inconvenient to completely separate the races, as in public
transportation, blacks had to sit in the back of the bus or in separate cars on the train
and give up their seats to whites if asked. The Supreme Court validated these practices
in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) by establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine, officially
permitting segregation as long as blacks had facilities equal to those of whites.
In the first several decades after Reconstruction, the rest of the nation mostly
ignored the status of blacks, because 90 percent of all African Americans livedSenator Hiram Revels, the first
African American to serve in the U.S.
Congress, represented Mississippi in
1870 and 1871.disenfranchised
To have been denied the ability to
exercise a right, such as the right
to vote.Jim Crow laws
State and local laws that mandated
racial segregation in all public
facilities in the South, many
border states, and some northern
communities between 1876 and 1964.“separate but equal” doctrine
The idea that racial segregation was
acceptable as long as the separate
facilities were of equal quality;
supported by Plessy v. Ferguson and
struck down by Brown v. Board of
Education.grandfather clause
A type of law enacted in several
southern states to allow those who
were permitted to vote before the
Civil War, and their descendants,
to bypass literacy tests and other
obstacles to voting, thereby
exempting whites from these tests
while continuing to disenfranchise
African Americans and other people
of color.Full_06_APT_64431_ch05_148-197.indd 153 16/11/18 1:27 PM