op-ed: time to unravel an american tradition: the pattern of black voter disenfranchisement throughout our history

We know that the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2010 has led to voter suppression if not downright disenfranchisement of people of color. But this is only the latest round of a repeating pattern of Supreme Court rulings and legislative action to disenfranchise people of color. The latest attempts to deprive black and Native American citizens and other minorities of their voting rights are just part of something that has become a troubling tradition throughout U.S. history.

Only the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1869 guaranteed that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” This superseded all state laws that had directly prohibited black voting. At the same time Congress enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870, which contained criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote, and the Force Act of 1871, which provided for federal election oversight. As a result, in the former Confederate states, where new black citizens in some cases comprised outright or near majorities of the eligible voting population, hundreds of thousands—and perhaps more than one million—recently-freed slaves registered to vote.

Black candidates for the first time were elected to state, local and federal offices and began to play a meaningful role in their governments. During Reconstruction black Americans were able to elect the first black senator Hiram Revel from Mississippi in 1870 and Congressman John Menard from Louisiana in 1868.

Congressman John Menard

In the turbulent time following Reconstruction, the 1890 Supreme Court Williams v Mississippi ruling validated Mississippi’s literacy tests and set off a spate of similar statutes. In 1896 Louisiana created a “grandfather clause” which said that those who had voted or had fathers or grandfathers who had voted before 1867 were exempt from literacy tests and poll taxes. Since no blacks had voted before 1867, they could not be exempted. By 1900 black voter registration had dropped from 45% to 4% in Louisiana. In South Carolina in 1895, Louisiana in 1898, North Carolina in 1900, Alabama and Virginia in 1901, Georgia in 1908 and Oklahoma 1910, similar statutes were adopted to suppress the black vote.

In 1915 Oklahoma’s grandfather clause was overturned by the Supreme Court in Guinn v U.S. Other states had to dismantle their grandfather clauses but found ways around the ruling to continue to suppress black voter registration until the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

The treatment of Native American voters parallels that of black Americans. Just like states that had large African American populations, states that had large Native American populations used the Supreme Court and voter suppression to disenfranchise Native peoples. Maine was one of the earliest states to disenfranchise Native Americans. In 1819 the legislature ruled that Native Americans who do not pay taxes could not vote.

In 1831 Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall defined Native Americans as “domestic dependents” under the “guardianship” of the U.S. government. As part of a pattern of denying Indians’ rights as U.S. citizens this ruling made disenfranchising Indians easier across the country.

In 1842 Rhode Island barred members of the Narragansett tribe from voting. It wasn’t until 1869 (after the passage of the 15th Amendment) that Massachusetts granted Indians citizenship and allowed them to vote.

The 1884 Supreme Court Elk v Wilkins decision denied voting rights to Native American John Elk after he attempted to vote in Nebraska. The Dawes General Allotment Act passed by Congress in 1884 granted citizenship to Native Americans but did not allow them to vote. Later the 1890 Indian Naturalization Act granted citizenship to Native Americans through an application process. White legislatures in states with large Native American populations used many of the same tricks used against black Americans during the racially turbulent time following Reconstruction. In 1897 Montana required a one-year state residency to vote. Because Indian reservations were not considered part of the state, they were ineligible to vote. In 1849 the California legislature ruled that there had to be a two-thirds majority to pass legislation allowing Indians to vote. It was not until 1915 that California granted the vote to Native Americans living on reservations. Ethan Anderson, a Native American, tried to register to vote in Lake County but was denied. He along with other Native Americans raised money for a court battle that in 1917 secured the vote for Native Americans who did not live on reservations.

As late as 1917 the Minnesota Supreme Court denied members of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe the right to vote in the Opsahl v Johnson case. In 1924 Congress “conferred” citizenship on 125,000 Native Americans but still did not implicitly make them eligible to vote. In 1928 the Arizona Supreme Court recognized Native Americans on reservations as state residents, but ruled that as people under “guardianship” they were not eligible to vote.

As more Native American citizens were denied their voting rights the 1830 Indian Relocation Act opened up huge tracts of fertile Indian land in the Southeast to cotton production. This led to a huge increase in cotton production and profits for slaveholding cotton plantation owners. The 1903 Supreme Court Lone Wolf v Hitchcock decision gave Congress the right to dispose of Indians land without their consent. Native American lands shrank from 154 million acres in 1887 to 48 million in 1937.

The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ended the Mexican American War and granted citizenship to Mexicans living in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada. However, they were denied the right to vote. Later property laws and language and literacy requirements were use to suppress and disenfranchise Mexican-American voters. When this failed Night Riders were used to intimidate Mexican-Americans and discourage them from voting.

Since the Supreme Court gutted sections of the Voting Rights Act in 2010 twenty-two states have enacted new voter restrictions. It is no coincidence that these same states have long histories of trying to disenfranchise and suppress the vote of people of color. We have seen how critically important the protection of voting rights is for all people of color and for our democracy. The current Republican-controlled Congress refusal to do their constitutional duty and consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee shows that they know how critical the control of the U.S. Supreme Court is to suppressing voting by people of color. This refusal should be seen for what it is: a poorly veiled attempt to keep conservative gains in place and to continue to disenfranchise people of color. A surge in voting by people of color would mean the end of this destructive Republican control and obstructionism at the local, state and national levels.

Alabama Youth for Voting Rights Act, 1965

*Nick Douglas is the author of Finding Octave: The Untold Story of Two Creole Families and Slavery in Louisiana. The book is available on amazon.com and those wishing to contact the author can contact him at www.findingoctave.tumblr.com