Difference between revisions of "Voter suppression"
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*[[Civil Rights movement]] | *[[Civil Rights movement]] | ||
*[[Essay:An analysis of another misleading poll]] | *[[Essay:An analysis of another misleading poll]] | ||
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[[Category:United States History]] | [[Category:United States History]] | ||
[[Category:United States Election Law]] | [[Category:United States Election Law]] | ||
[[Category:Election Terms]] | [[Category:Election Terms]] | ||
Revision as of 21:41, July 3, 2020
The Democratic party exercised voter suppression in of the African American vote in the South for the first 100 years after the Republican-controlled Congress and states passed the 15th Amendment. In 1964, a near unanimous vote of Republicans, coupled with a bi-partisan coalition of some Democrats, passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowing for federal intervention end Jim Crow laws in Blue States.
Voter suppression occured through discriminatory practices at polling stations and often through intimidation and violence by the terrorist wing of the Democrat party - the Ku Klux Klan.
History
With the defeat of the Democrats and the South, to the victors went the spoils. Republicans immediately stripped white males who engaged in rebellion against the United States of the vote, and gave it to Blacks. Newly freed Blacks held local, state and federal elected and non-elected positions as Republicans. The white males who were deprived of the vote were also barred from holding any civil service position and were universally Democrats. This disenfranchisement created enormous resentment among Democrats, so they formed the Ku Klux Klan to engage in voter intimidation and suppression.
African Americans in the South were left to the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments dominated by white Democratic legislatures; neither the legislatures, law enforcement or the courts worked to protect freedmen.[1] As Democrats regained power in the late 1870s, they struggled to suppress black voting through intimidation and fraud at the polls. Paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts acted on behalf of the Democrats to suppress black voting. From 1890 to 1908, 10 of the 11 former Confederate states passed disfranchising constitutions or amendments,[2] with provisions for poll taxes,[3] residency requirements, literacy tests,[3] and grandfather clauses that effectively disfranchised most black voters and many poor white people. The disfranchisement also meant that black people could not serve on juries or hold any political office, which were restricted to voters; those who could not vote were excluded from the political system.