COBBLESTONE May/June 2008, Vol. 29, No. 5, Pp. 6-9

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COBBLESTONE May/June 2008, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp. 6-9

Prejudice at the Polls

Gaining the Right to Vote

By Emily Claypool

Stepping inside a voting booth on Election Day is perhaps the most important part of being an American citizen. But the Constitution does not even address who has--or does not have--the right to vote. The Founding Fathers initially left those decisions up to the state governments. Over the years, however, a number of amendments to the Constitution have extended voting rights to include every citizen over the age of 18. Just how did we get from white-male-landowner suffrage to where we are today? It has been a long and challenging road.

Property Equals Power

Before the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the right to vote was restricted to those who owned property or paid taxes. Since white adult men were the only people allowed to do so, they usually were the only people who could vote. Some colonies also had religious restrictions. Catholics and Jews were two religious groups often banned from voting.

After the United States became independent from Great Britain, most states lifted the landowning restriction on voting rights. The states felt pressure from men who did not own property but wanted the privilege of voting. Some of these men were soldiers who had fought in the recent war. It didn't seem fair to deny the right to vote to people who had been willing to die for their country. The early 1800s were the time of "universal manhood suffrage," or the right to vote for all white men.

Ironically, while white men's voting rights were broadening, new restrictions were established for other citizens. Every new state that became part of the Union after 1819 banned blacks and immigrants from voting. Previously, white male property owners who were not citizens had been allowed to vote. In New Jersey, which was the only state that had allowed female landowners to vote, women lost their suffrage.

Twelve states forbade poor people to vote, and 24 states didn't let convicted criminals vote. Some states also imposed residency requirements on would-be voters and made people take literacy tests to prove they could read and write English. Only people who could pass these tests were allowed to vote.

Former Slaves Get the Vote, Sort Of

After the Civil War (1861-1865) and the end of slavery, many Northern politicians believed that former slaves needed the vote to protect their new rights as citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1870) prohibited the states from preventing a man from voting based on his race or status as a former slave. But even though blacks now had the constitutional right to vote, white Southerners were still disenfranchising them.

Property qualifications, pre-election registration, residency requirements, and literacy tests were just a few of the "voting reforms" put in place by certain states to prevent blacks from voting. These restrictions, and the unwritten threat of physical harm or death, made it difficult for black Americans to safely exercise their right to vote.

The Suffragists' Struggle

Meanwhile, a number of socially minded women had been active in the fight to abolish slavery. When African American men were given the vote after the Civil War but women were not, women began to focus on their own voting rights. Led by Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, these "suffragists" (women who were campaigning for the right to vote) believed that if all citizens had the right to all the privileges of citizenship, as stated in the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), then everyone should have the right to vote.

But the federal government did not share their opinion. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the suffragists' argument that the right to vote was based on the definition of citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Court ruled in 1875 that only a Constitutional amendment could grant women the right to vote.

The women's movement grew and became better organized and better funded in the early 1900s. It developed into a powerful social force, organizing marches in major cities and protests in front of the White House. But during World War I (1914-1918), many, although not all, suffragists put aside their own agenda temporarily, as they supported the troops by selling war bonds and sewing clothes for soldiers. Their patriotic efforts during the war eventually turned the tide of support in their favor. In 1920, champions for women's suffrage celebrated as the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified and states were prohibited from denying a person the right to vote based on gender.

The First Citizens

Native Americans also faced a struggle to ensure both their voting rights and their rights as U.S. citizens. Until the late 1800s, native people were considered citizens of their own, specific Indian nations and were not recognized as U.S. citizens.

As in the fight for women's suffrage, Native Americans' participation in World War I turned the tide for this group. First, in 1919, Congress awarded veterans the right to apply for citizenship. Then, in 1924, the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act removed any special applications or conditions and officially recognized native people as U.S. citizens.

A Government Guarantee

As late as the 1960s, black Americans still faced obstacles to exercising their right to vote. Some Southern states were still using literacy tests and poll taxes to limit voting by African Americans.

But 20 years of nonviolent protests during the civil rights movement finally paid off. Two key pieces of legislation were passed: The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution (1964) banned all tax payment preconditions, and the Voting Rights Act (1965) prohibited literacy tests and sent federal agents to the South to help register black voters. One hundred years after the end of the Civil War, the federal government began enforcing its laws over local Southern state laws, to guarantee African Americans the same privileges of citizenship as white citizens.

Eighteen's the Magic Number

The voting rights story doesn't end there. The Vietnam War (1954-1975) raised awareness among young people. At that time, the voting age was 21. However, men were required to register for the Selective Service (the draft) on their 18th birthdays. Many young people believed that if they were old enough to go to war, they should have the right to vote for the officials who were making wartime decisions: "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote."

President Lyndon B. Johnson kept this in mind when he asked Congress to propose an amendment to the Constitution. On July 1, 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment was ratified, officially lowering the voting age to 18.

After more than two centuries of unequal voting rights, all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 finally had the right to vote. Each of these groups--non-landowners, women, Native Americans, African Americans, and young people--had fought for suffrage. To the individuals who had endured the conflict, getting the right to vote meant being able to fully exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Each of them made sure that future generations would be represented and would have a voice in their government.

Suffrage is the right to vote.

Disenfranchise means to take away someone's right to vote. People who are enfranchised have been granted the right to vote.

A poll tax is a fixed fee per person. In the past, people were often required to pay a poll tax before being allowed to vote.

Emily Claypool is a student at New York University.

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JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC Feb. 25, 2008, Vol. 110, No. 13, pp. 12+

One Nation Now?

Journey Through the South After the Civil War Reveals the Failures of Reconstruction

By Sean Price

In June 1865, the wounds of the Civil War were still raw. The Union and Confederate armies had stopped fighting just two months earlier, on April 9. Nearly 620,000 soldiers were dead. Any relief that Americans felt over the war's end had been cut short by news of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 14.

Americans were restless and unsure about what would happen next. Lincoln's Vice President, Andrew Johnson, now sat in the White House. Few Americans knew anything about him. The United States had begun Reconstruction--the effort to rebuild the war-shattered South and reunify the country. But big questions remained unanswered. Should Southerners be allowed back as U.S. citizens? What would become of the millions of ex-slaves freed by the war? Most important, could the victorious North and the defeated South ever become one nation again?

(See picture, "Map: Reconstruction.")

A Boston writer named J.T. Trowbridge (1827-1916) wanted to answer those and other questions. Starting in June 1865, he took a journey through the South. Trowbridge visited former battlefields, farms, and burned-out cities. He spoke with plantation owners, ex-slaves, soldiers, and anyone else who could give him insight. Afterward, he wrote a book called A Picture of the Desolated States; and the Work of Restoration.

Ruin and Recovery

Trowbridge's title was fitting. Most of the fighting had taken place in the 11 Southern states that had rebelled against the U.S. and formed the Confederacy. "All up and down, as far as the eye could reach, the business portion of the city bordering on the river lay in ruins," Trowbridge reported from Richmond, Virginia, once the Confederate capital. "Beds of cinders [ashes], cellars half-filled with bricks and rubbish, broken and blackened walls...such was the scene, which extended over 30 entire [city blocks]. "

During the Civil War, farms had become battlefields and graveyards. Afterward, they became farms again. Antietam, in Maryland, was the site of one of the war's bloodiest battles. There, Trowbridge found a farmer's hogs digging up Union and Confederate graves.

"I picked up a skull lying loose on the ground like a cobblestone," Trowbridge wrote. "It was that of a young man; the teeth were all splendid and sound...I felt a strange curiosity to know who had been its hapless [unlucky] owner, carrying it safely through 20 or more years of life to lose it here."

Trowbridge praised the work of the Freedmen's Bureau. It was a government agency set up to help Negroes--as African-Americans were then called--to adjust to freedom. As slaves, they had been banned from learning to read and write. So the Bureau set up about 4,000 new schools for them. "[Students from ages] 6 years to 60 may be seen, side by side, learning to read from the same chart or book," Trowbridge wrote about a one-room school in Tennessee. "Perhaps a bright little Negro boy or girl is teaching a whitehaired old man, or bent old woman in spectacles, their letters."

A Step Backward

Many white Southerners refused to accept that blacks were now free. Any person of color showing signs of independence--such as asking for wages--risked being violently attacked. Southerners also resented the many Northerners taking control of their state governments.

The Ku Klux Klan and other terror groups formed throughout the South. Such groups killed more than 3,000 freed blacks and their white allies. "[Whites] are very sharp with us now," said one 70-year-old ex-slave in Virginia. "If a man of my color dared to say what he thought, it would be all his life was worth!"

In Washington, D.C., a group of Southern gentlemen scoffed at Trowbridge's idea that free blacks would willingly work for pay. "They can't take care of themselves!" one of the men declared. "They'll starve before they'll work, unless driven to it."

Unfortunately for African-Americans, President Johnson--along with many Northern whites--shared this low opinion of them. Johnson had no interest in granting blacks civil rights and quickly forgave whites who had been Confederate leaders.

Congress, however, was run by Republicans--the party of Lincoln. They wanted just the opposite. Congress created laws that protected African-Americans. It also wrote the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The Amendments ended slavery, made blacks full citizens, and gave black men the right to vote. Most white Southerners disliked such measures.

Reconstruction ended in 1877, when President Rutherford B. Hayes pulled the last federal troops from the South. Without those troops enforcing Reconstruction laws, Southern states openly oppressed blacks once more. It would take almost a century for black people to win civil rights in the South again.

"One Nation Now"

When Reconstruction ended, overcoming regional hatreds seemed to be an impossible problem. One white man in South Carolina told Trowbridge that he had just one feeling toward Northerners: hatred. "I get up at half-past four in the morning," he said, "and sit up to twelve at night just to hate 'em."

But Trowbridge found that most Southerners were glad to have war behind them. "It is astonishing, when you think of it," a former Confederate soldier from Virginia told him. "Southern men and Northern men ride together in the same trains, and stop at the same hotels, as if we were all one people--as indeed we are: one nation now...as we never were before, and never could have been without the war."

Words to Know

• Freedmen: African-Americans who had been released from slavery.

• Ku Klux Klan (KKK): a group formed in 1865 or 1866 by white Southerners. The KKK used fear and brutal violence to oppose rights for African-Americans. It was re-established in 1915. During the 1960s, the Klan resisted the civil-rights movement.

• Confederate: of the Confederate States of America (South) during the Civil War.

• desolated: made dismal, wretched, lonely, or sorrowful; made unfit to live in.

• Union: of the United States (North) during the Civil War.

Think About It

1. What did the constitutional Amendments enacted during Reconstruction promise?
2. Was it wise for the federal government to withdraw troops from the South in 1877? What would you have done, and why?