James Lee Dickey: An Analysis of One African-American's Leadership in Jim Crow Texas

15th Amendment

In 1868, ratification of the 15th amendment guaranteed that no one could be denied the right to vote based on race or condition of servitude, however, the amendment did not deny discrimination on the basis of education, property, religious beliefs or ancestry. Southerners did not feel morally bound to any of the Civil War amendments. Georgia’s Governor Smith gloated that “his state could hold inviolate every law of the United States and still so legislate upon our labor system as to retain our old plantation system.” In search of “rule by intelligent property holders,” Southern governments created barriers that would eradicate electoral participation by both blacks and poor whites. Poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications, arbitrary registration practices, and the grandfather clause remained in state statutes in some form until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Though it was a gradual process to eliminate voter registrations, in Louisiana in 1896, there were 130,334 Negroes registered to vote; in 1900, there were only 5,320. The trend repeated throughout the South.
 

This page has paths:

This page references: