Disenfranchising Virginia Summary

The Virginia’s Statutes illustrate the declining Status of African American slaves was written because the state of Virginia wanted to state several rules and laws for their slaves. This document was written by the State of Virginia legislatures, being they were the ones who wrote it and established it. The main rule applied was that black people could not be with white people. Any white person married to a black or mulatto would be banished and will be known as a systematic plan formed to capture outlying slaves. Black men and women were known as slaves.

The Fifteenth Amendment gave black males over the age of 21 the right to vote. However, southern states set up poll taxes and literacy test in order to keep most blacks from voting. In order to keep the white votes they set up the grandfather clause, which allowed the seventy-five percent of the poor illiterate white people to still vote if they were the son or grandson of someone who was eligible to vote before 1867.

Black voting fell off sharply in most areas because of threats by white employers and violence from the Ku Klux Klan.The reading and writing ability test did not just keep out the 60 percent of voting-age black men (most of them ex-slaves) who could not read. It left out almost all black men because the clerk would select complicated technical passages for them to understand. Very differently, the clerk would pass whites by picking simple series of words that make sense and that have a subject and a verb in the state constitution for them to explain.Mississippi also puts into law a "grandfather clause" that allowed registering anyone whose grandfather was qualified to vote before the Civil War. Obviously, this benefited only white person (who

On June 21, 1915 the Supreme court decided that the grandfather rule and Literacy test o voters violate the constitution and should not be legal. This issue is a very important matter in the eyes of many people in the south. Before the supreme court ruled that Literacy tests and the grandfather rule were unconstitutional, the voting system was very biased towards white males. Although the 15th amendment was passed to allow all people to participate in politics if they were an american citizen, the federal governments for many states made laws that restricted many voters from voting.

“It forbade all the states to deny the vote to anyone “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This was the final blow to the southern states, which quickly ratified the amendment. By March 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment became apart of the Constitution. Now taking into consideration the hell that southern blacks were enduring, this short period of time consisted of three Amendments being passed that shed a light on the black population that most blacks at the time had given up on. Congress gave the opportunity for blacks to step out of slavery, accept citizenship, and take the power to vote and change the way the south had been ran. “The Radicals had at last succeeded in imposing their will on the South, Throughout the region former slaved had real political influence; they voted, held office, and exercised the “privileges” and enjoyed the “immunities” guarantied them by the Fourteenth Amendment…The spectacle of blacks not five years removed from slavery in positions of power and responsibility attracted much attention at the time and has since been examined exhaustively by historians.”

The Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 granted African Americans citizenship and equal protection under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 granted African Americans the right to vote. These amendments were passed in an effort to combat racism and reshape public perception of blacks, however, these laws were hard to enforce and Southern states developed their own laws like the Black Codes to control the newly freed slaves. Jim Crow-era laws in the South like the poll tax and literacy tests prevented many blacks in the South from voting. Anyone who tried to break Southern traditions was subject to violence and intimidation from the Ku Klux Klan.

This proved to be a very important act passed. The passing of the voting to African Americans was strongly not wanted. The Ku Klux Klan along with other hate groups tried to prevent the 15th Amendment from being in place by violence and intimidation. In view of that fact the practical question immediately is, whether that situation of things could be changed by legislation. And if it could, if the protection of those whom the Ku-Klux keeps from the polls by terror would prevent the national government falling into the hands of the Ku-Klux party, ought they not to be protected and the government saved”, The Ku Klux 1871. “Two decisions in 1876 by the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of enforcement under the Enforcement Act and the Force Act, and together with the end of Reconstruction marked by the removal of federal troops after the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, resulted in a climate in which violence could be used to depress black voter turnout and fraud could be used to undo the effect of lawfully cast votes”, Before the Voting Rights Act.

selectively.” (Laney 11) Other laws and practices, such as the white primary, attempted to evade the 15th Amendment by allowing private political parties to conduct elections and establish qualifications for their members. As a result of these efforts, in the former Confederate states nearly all black citizens were disenfranchised and removed by 1910. The process of restoring the rights stolen by these tactics would take many decades.

In order to limit the voting rights of African Americans, there were poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses were created. The poll taxes was an annual taxes, for those who wanted to vote.

Soon after passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal examiners were conducting voter registration, and black voter registration began a sharp increase. The cumulative effect of the Supreme Court’s decisions, Congress’ enactment of voting rights legislation, and the ongoing efforts of concerned private citizens and the Department of Justice, has been to restore the right to vote guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by

In the year 1870 the 15th amendment was passed. The fithteenth amendemt reads “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” (Mcneese, Tim). But even though this was passed blacks still saw a problem voting. America started the Jim

In 1867, Congress passed a new Reconstruction Act, that threw out the state governments of states that refused to ratify the 14th amendment. The 15th amendment was ratified in 1870, providing a constitutional guarantee of voting rights for African American males.

The United States first began to deal with the issue of voter suppression during the Reconstruction. During Reconstruction freed slaves earned their right to vote and hold office through the fifteenth amendment in 1870. In 1877, Democrats, known as Dixiecrats, began to impose laws that were designed to suppress the African American vote or better known as Jim Crow Laws. The Jim Crow voting laws required the freedmen to pass literacy tests that they were unable to pass because of no formal education because of their status of slaves. Many states created poll taxes, which many poor Americans, white and black, were unable to pay. Many precincts made their voting precincts “white only” so that blacks would have nowhere to cast their votes. The Jim Crow voter suppression tactics were so successful that only three percent of African Americans in the south were registered to vote in 1940. Although African American males were given the right to vote in

The only way any men were to be exempted from this clause was if his father or grandfather were to have voted previous to 1867. Being that African Americans’ ancestors were slaves, they were not able to be exempted thus they had to pass the tests, pay the tax, and pass any other requirements thrown at them. It was not until June 21, 1915 that the court declared it unlawful, leaving way for African Americans to vote.

The Fifteenth Amendment granted black men to vote. Put emphasis on men because at this time women still couldn't vote.This amendment would not be fully followed until almost a century. What the government did was that they made a literacy test so difficult that no slave could pass because they had no education. So no blacks could vote really for a long time. So to loop their loophole that made a rule called the Grandfather Clause. This made if your grandfather could vote you did not have to take the literacy test. So every white person's grandfather could vote since they lived in england. So this rule did not apply to blacks since their grandfathers were black and could not vote. One of the main reasons that they made this rule is because