Poll Tax: A tax levied by
southern states to dis-
franchise blacks and poor
whites.
Grandfather Clause: A
legal provision in south-
ern states that exempted
whites from voting restric-
tions aimed at blacks.
Literacy Tests: A device
used by southern regis-
trars to disqualify blacks
from voting.
Reconstruction: The
federal government’s
attempts after the Civil
War to restore the defeat-
ed Confederate states to
the Union and to assist
the former slaves.
Jim Crow: A nineteenth-
century minstrel charac-
ter whose caricature of
black culture became
identified with segrega-
tionist practices in the
South.
Black Codes: Southern
state laws enacted after
the Civil War that greatly
restricted black mobility,
economic opportunity,
and political expression.
good anyway – so jest go on an’ kill ’em.” ’ Appalled by the frequency of such
attacks, writer Mark Twain called America the ‘United States of Lyncherdom.’
Once blacks were intimidated, white politicians devised all manner of
tricks to keep them from the voting booth. Whites claimed that removing
blacks from politics would end electoral corruption and improve race rela-
tions as blacks accepted their proper place in society. Southern states
imposed poll taxesthat were payable in cash months before elections at a
time when farmhands were cash poor. In Louisiana, the legislature effectively
eliminated blacks from the political process by restricting the franchise to
male descendants of grandfatherswho could vote right after the Civil War.
In South Carolina, officials set up eight ballot boxes – one for each office –
and invalidated ballots that semiliterate black voters placed in the wrong
box. In addition, the voting rolls were kept lily white by testing a black per-
son’s literacy, tossing out improperly completed forms, and, ultimately, just
closing the registrar’s office for days. These measures reduced black voting
in the South to 3 per cent in 1900 and crushed all opposition to the white-
controlled Democratic party. South Carolina governor Ben Tillman boasted,
‘We have done our best. We have scratched our heads to find out how we
could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them.
We are not ashamed of it.’ The federal government sat idly by as these out-
rages were perpetrated.
As the North retreated after Reconstruction, the South instituted a rigid
caste system called Jim Crow, so named from a minstrel caricature of the
1830s. In the Black Codes, lawmakers barred blacks from attending white
schools, marrying whites, testifying in court, having a gun, or owning prop-
erty. Southern states rewrote their constitutions to separate the races from
birth to burial. Signs appeared reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’ for drinking
fountains, toilets, telephone booths, and bus stations. Each race had its own
hospital and prison; theaters consigned blacks to the balcony, which was
nicknamed ‘the buzzard’s roost’; libraries were for whites only. Racial mores
permitted whites to call black men ‘Boy’ or ‘Uncle,’ never ‘Mr’ or ‘Sir.’ Blacks
were expected to walk in the gutter when whites came along. Except for fam-
ily cooks, maids, and wet-nurses, not even in death could a black be near a
white. Whites could mix with blacks, however. Because white men raped
black women and fathered mulatto children – a crime called miscegenation- this color-conscious society defined a person with even one drop of black
blood as black and thus forever barred from society’s privileges. Incredibly,
whites imagined that their black servants and farmhands truly loved them.
Stereotypes reflecting such prejudice proliferated and made black mis-
treatment seem logical. Racist artists depicted black adults with bulbous lips,
bulging eyes, and vacuous smiles and black children eating watermelon and
playing with jungle animals. These outlandish images appeared on cereal
10 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Miscegenation: Marriage
or cohabitation between
men and women of dif-
ferent races.