For the African American community, the road to universal black suffrage has been a long and arduous battle and still continues to be a contentious issue. In recent times, the idea of voter suppression has been once again brought to the table during the current Trump administration. On May 11 2017, the President issued the ‘Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity’ which was brought in to “study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections”[1] The establishment was headed by Kris Kobach, a senator of Kansas who’s known for his vocal support of stricter voter ID laws and was brought into prevent voter fraud. It has been criticized of really being a tool for voter suppression. This recent case is relevant as voter suppression is at the centre of voting inequality in the black community and is a form of discrimination.
The core of voter suppression and the struggle for equal voting rights for Blacks dates back to the 19th century. Despite Andrew Jackson installing universal suffrage in a country where less than 6% of the population were allowed to vote, this right did not extend to the African American community. This would continue until the 3 February 1870 and the ratification of the 15th amendment which stated that voting rights would “…not be denied…based on account of race”[2] Whilst this was a major breakthrough for voting equality, it would still take another 95 years before African American civil rights would begin to be upheld.
Through the use of the Jim Crow laws, African Americans would continue to be disenfranchised. These state laws were created to restrict African Americans from voting. Laws such as the introduction of the Literacy test in 1890 were designed to suppress black people from voting and keep a distinct segregation between the races. Literacy tests were given to prospective voters so that even if an African American was registered to vote, the test would be rigged and would still not be allowed to vote. This had a significant impact as by 1862, barely a decade since the ratification of the 15th amendment, only 6% of African Americans were registered to vote in southern states such as Mississippi and poll taxes were used almost as a voting fee which further suppressed the African American population from voting. This was on top of violence and intimidation from white supremacy groups, this has been called “Southern states adopted poll taxes and literacy tests to suppress any black voting not already nullified by fraud and violence.”[3] In addition, there also seemed to be a sense of urgency to protect black voting rights in the North, by the party that ratified the 15th amendment in the first place. The Republicans lost major support in the South dropping from 40% between 1874-1886 to 30% by 1896. This loss did not dampen the success of the Republican Party as William McKinley won the Presidency anyway in 1896. This clearly shows that the Republicans did not need the southern vote to succeed and were not incentivised to protect the rights of African Americans and led to further voter suppression for the next few decades. It was said that “McKinley declined to criticise the election riot of whites”[4]
This legacy of voter suppression would eventually come to a head with the civil rights movement from 1955-65. The Montgomery Bus boycott of 1955 lasted a whole year until it racial segregation on public transport was deemed to be illegal and helped bring the issue of African American civil rights to the fore front of American politics “…the high profile civil rights campaigns…attracted the bulk of American media attention”[5] Through the use of media attention, Martin Luther King focussed on re-enfranchising the African American population who had grown disillusioned over the decades worth of racial voter suppression. He spent much of his time focussing on fighting racism in Mississippi through the use of protests and mass marches through Birmingham, Mississippi and across the southern states. By 1964, across all the confederacy states, there was on average about 57% of eligible African American voters who were not on the electoral roll and not eligible to vote. The civil rights movement came to ahead with the passing of the Civil Rights act on July 2 1964 which prohibited discrimination in schools, public transport and any other public facilities. The act passed comfortably through the house “the voting rights bill encountered relatively little difficulty in Congress, by early August it became law”[6]
The legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has left a huge impact on American politics and the effects and aftermath of the Act are still being felt today and still face scrutiny in the current political climate. It has been said that “The future of black electoral politics remains unsettled a decade and a half into the twenty-first century”[7] with many seeing the election of Donald Trump a reaction to the Obama presidency. Barack Obama had only been in the US senate for 3 years before his ascendancy to the White House but as of 2007, only 50% of blacks believed his words with many citing his birthplace of Hawaii and his bi-racial heritage as showing that Obama did not truly understand the experience of average African Americans. It is clear that Obama did not completely represent the African American culture but approached a more broader appeal to all.
The disillusionment of Obama is linked to the rise of Donald Trump as he has seen to appeal to more conservative and right-wing voters. Currently, the NAACP are issuing a legal case against the ‘Election integrity’ for seemingly being in violation against the fifteenth amendment and intentionally supressing the vote to African American voters. Overall, it is clear that African Americans have a long way to go in terms of voting equality as African Americans continue to fight voter suppression and whilst it has improved with the impact of the civil rights movement, it is clear that the black population have a long way to go to achieve complete representation in terms of voting.
[1] Federal Register (2017) ‘Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity’, , 82(93), pp. 1 [Online]. Available at: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/05/16/2017-10003/establishment-of-presidential-advisory-commission-on-election-integrity (Accessed: 04/04/2020).
[2] Whitman H. Ridgeway (2011) ‘A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875’, The Journal of American History, 97(4), pp. 1131 [Online]. Available at: https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=016/llsl016.db&recNum=1166 (Accessed: 04/03/2020)
[3] Michael Karman (2007) Brown V. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, (pp.3) New York: Oxford University Press.
[4] Ibid, pp.5
[5] Robert Cook (1998) Sweet Land of Liberty?; the African-American struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century, (pp.150), Longman.
[6] Steven Lawson (2014), pp. 157 Running for Freedom: Civil rights and Black politics in America since 1941, : Wiley-Blackwell.
[7] Ibid, pp. 342
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