Black Voters Matter — A History of Voter Suppression
“A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln” (1858)
On January 13th, 2022, two voting right bills that passed in the House were combined for the Senate and then voted down in the Senate on January 19th, 2022. The vote was 52–48 with moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voting with Republicans. After the vote failed, there was a thundering round of applause from Republicans.
Ironically, defeat of a voting rights bill by use of the Senate’s arcane rules mirrors the nation’s history of repression of voting rights. Like the Republican minority in the Senate, white supremacists throughout the country have always wanted their vote to “count more” than those of the majority. As with the Freedom to Vote Act, these supremacists have surreptitiously used rules and manipulation of the voting process to ensure their dominance.
The influence of white supremacy in our Federal government is as strong today as it was under the Slave Power Conspiracy. Segregationists who support voting suppression to maintain their political power have always been part of our history and remain part of our current reality. Instead of wearing hoods, they wear suits with patriotic pins on their lapels and continue with their dog whistle campaigns and political strategy. This is not a new phenomenon brought on by the previous president, it is a systemic reality that was emboldened to come out in the bright light and shine by the previous administration. Whether it is fear of Trump’s grip or the rush of power or the genuine beliefs of politicians, white supremacy lives in the halls of our democracy. The most powerful engine for white supremacy is voter suppression and we are witnessing its all-out assault on Black votes which is an assault on our democracy.
“If Black Lives Matter, why don’t Blacks vote?” This common misperception of Black voters is held by both Democrats and Republicans. The real question is, if Black voters don’t vote, why have white supremacists needed to suppress Black votes for 150 years? This is a two part series with the first part addressing the history of voter suppression. Part 2 is the next posting and addresses the double-edged Black voter suppression through incarceration and the census. The cited works can be found in the text links and listed after Part 2.
Why don’t Blacks vote? In the first century following our nation’s birth, this question was irrelevant as only white men had the right to vote. The 15th Amendment was passed during Reconstruction in 1870 and granted Blacks the right to vote and the ability to be elected to public office. Shortly thereafter, Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce became the first African Americans to be elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Mississippi. However, another Black Senator was not elected until almost a century later, in 1967, when Edwards Brooke was elected in Massachusetts.
Southern states had pushed for and received legislative autonomy as a concession at the Constitutional Convention in exchange for their vote to ratify the Constitution. They used this concession to ruthlessly perpetuate and expand slavery. After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment granted emancipated Blacks the right to vote and was expressly intended to take away local Southern states’ efforts to block or suppress Black voting through legislative work arounds. The amendment’s adoption prompted a wave of Black votes and Black elected officials but, this wave predictably retreated with the withdrawal of Federal troops from the former Confederate states and the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877. Not wanting to provide Blacks political power, the South attempted to revive their autonomy through their state constitutions by banning or suppressing voting rights through a variety of legal and illegal means.
The collapse of Reconstruction revived and empowered the white supremacist wing of the Southern Democratic Party. The former Confederate states immediately began suppressing the Black vote through state and local laws which evaded the 15th Amendment’s mandates. White legislators obstructed Black voting by adding voting requirements including poll taxes, literacy tests, and even guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar as a test of supposed “competence” to participate as a voter. No white voters were subjected to these tests. In another ‘work around’ to the constitutional guarantee of the right to vote, Southern states adopted ‘grandfather clauses,’ which restricted voting rights to only men who were allowed to vote, or whose male ancestors were allowed to vote before the 15th Amendment’s adoption in 1870. Illegal means were deployed in conjunction with these supposed ‘legal’ evasions to obstruct Black voting. Black voters faced intimidation and potential physical harm or even death, if they attempted to vote.
The U.S. House Archives reflect the historical alignment of Black voters with the Republican Party which at the time, was viewed as the ‘Party of Lincoln’. The reversal of political values between the Democratic and Republican Party began in the late 1920s. Republicans were becoming less strident about advancing Black civil rights which alienated many Black voters. In turn, Northern Democrats were slightly open to the idea of civil rights if it would woo Black voters to their side.
The economic fallout from the Great Depression and the stock market crash provided a decisive moment of political reckoning for African Americans. Manufacturing and agricultural jobs had fallen away and the Black unemployment rate rose to 38% as opposed to 17% for whites. Although they made up only 10% of the total population, African Americans represented 20% of the welfare recipients. This was more pronounced in urban centers like Chicago for example, where Blacks were only 6% of the city’s total population but made up 25% of welfare recipients.
The turning point came in the 1932 presidential election between incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hoover had spent his first term soliciting Southern segregationist support and his hands off response to the Depression hit African Americans particularly hard. Hoover was still able to obtain the majority of Black votes in Northern cities due primarily from Black loyalty to the party and resentment towards the Southern Democrats whom Roosevelt appeased by choosing a Texan as running mate. A Black vote for a Southerner was too much for Democrats to ask from Blacks after the long history of Southern repression.
In the 1920s, Republican candidates for Congress had a lock on Black votes. Chicago’s subsequent change in electoral voting marked the turning point for Black political alliances. Before this happened, African Americans were experiencing politics on a local ward and precinct level. Republican Oscar De Priest of South Chicago had been elected in 1928, 1930, and 1932. At the time, Southern Blacks were migrating in large numbers to Chicago, making it the second largest Black urban population in the country. With a Republican machine at the head of the ticket, Black voters were courted and catered to — in contrast to the Jim Crow South. When Chicago’s first African American alderman was elected, Black loyalty to the Republican ticket was cemented.
Disparate economic consequences from 1929’s Great Depression, combined with Republican laissez-faire response to the depression, alienated Black voters. One of the first powerful Black politicians in Chicago, Arthur Mitchell, switched parties and became the first African American Democrat elected to Congress on FDR’s coattails, after campaigning for him in 1932. Nationally, Democrats were successfully organizing Black voters at the local level. A new, younger generation of Black voters began to align with the Democrats as the Black Republican base quickly eroded. Unfortunately, FDR continued to pander to the segregationists in the South and vacillated on his support of Black civil rights, in part due to Southern control of Congress. While FDR dithered and ignored the rights of Black constituents, his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, took on a leading role while working side by side with Black activist, Mary McLeod Bethune.
The tide began to turn by 1934 when Illinois’s First Congressional District became a Democratic stronghold. Chicago’s political machines starting with Mayor Thompson, followed by Edward J. Kelly and Richard J. Daley, noted the significant migration of Southern blacks to Chicago and its working-class jobs. Seeing an opportunity to grow their base, Democrats began to court Black voters. The potential power of the Black vote was recognized at the local level before the national level. Chicago began sending Black Congressmen to Capitol Hill and they eventually made up nearly 1/3rd of the Black representatives in Congress. Party and party boss loyalty was strong by Black Congressional members. By the 1960s, this loyalty began to dissipate as Black political leaders started to look more towards their local communities than to the party bosses and political heavyweights for support.
Beginning in the 1950s, the Civil Rights movement brought together a coalition of Black leaders, students, the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other allies to fight for Black voting rights in the early 1960s. These peaceful advocates were met with violence and even death from white residents and law enforcement. Again, this violent repression of Black voters reinforces the central question of this piece — if Blacks don’t show up to vote, why would they need to be faced with violent opposition?
At the height of the Civil Rights movement, the nation ratified the 24th Amendment to address some of the South’s more egregious suppressive acts and eliminated the poll taxes for federal election rights. After significant pressure from Civil Rights leaders, President Johnson maneuvered the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through a resistant Congress. This provided practical enforcement tools to guarantee the Constitution’s 15th Amendment granting of voting rights for all races and genders. Unfortunately, as time would reveal, even this landmark legislation failed to ensure Black voting rights.
Southern Democrats’ rebellion over Civil Rights prompted a Republican shift in tactics to win over white Southern voters. Angie Maxwell wrote in the Washington Post (2019) although many people believe that the ‘Southern strategy’ by the Republican party turned with Nixon, the reality is the process evolved over time. Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, launched this strategy (originally called ‘Operation Dixie’) in 1964. The strategy was based on alarming white citizens about the rising cries for civil rights and other white supremacy concerns, a clearly racist appeal for white voters.
Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 presidential campaign successfully capitalized on racist fears and drove so-called Southern Dixiecrats who had abandoned the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Nixon issued racist dog whistles to segregationist Southern Dixiecrats including calls for “law and order,” an end to political protests, and declaring a war on drugs… and he was not the last presidential candidate to deploy these tactics to win over white voters. Because of these common presidential dog whistles, the vacillating political sways of the South swung to both sides over the next 40 years. Southern Dixiecrats concerns weren’t just racist, but misogynistic as part of general resistance to any kind of social change that threatened traditional white male Southern power. They opposed women’s rights and tied their political beliefs to fundamentalist “Christian family values.”
When Democrat Jimmy Carter, a born again Southern Baptist peanut farmer, ran in 1976 — Dixiecrats thought they were electing one of their own. When Carter proved to be too liberal, they abandoned him and voted for Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan continued Nixon’s dog whistles and created a new false racist stereotype of the “welfare queen,” — a Black woman who was a manipulating, free loading abuser of public benefits. He pandered to the prevailing white myth that Blacks are impoverished by choice and that “expensive” government social programs unfairly disadvantage white Americans.
Although black political leaders often labeled him as “America’s first black President,” Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s moderate to conservative leanings won white Southern votes and prevailed in five Southern states in 1992 and 1996. Unlike Carter, Clinton did not disappoint the Dixiecrats with his 1994 Crime Bill, which markedly accelerated the incarceration of African Americans, promoting the myth that “urban” crime was caused by recidivist Black offenders. The Republicans continue to embrace this racist platform and have systemically built on it through today.
Republican pandering to Southern white evangelicals has driven Republican candidates to portray an image of Christian values and beliefs (even if only fictional). However, the fig leaf of “family values” was dropped for Donald Trump personally in order to achieve white supremacy power and control over the federal judiciary in 2016. While only 38% of Southern white evangelicals believed Donald Trump to be a “true Christian,” 84% still voted for him. The white Southern evangelical alliance with the Democratic Party during Reconstruction and Jim Crow officially transferred its mantle of leadership to the Republicans. The South, except for Georgia, has become a Southern Republican lock. Trump’s public statements about voting and racist anti-immigration stances outweighed his almost admitted amoral behavior among pragmatic Southern white voters. Claiming ‘voter fraud’ and a ‘stolen election,’ the Republicans are using this thin vail to justify overt voter suppression and to deny the Freedom to Vote Act in an effort to perpetuate systemic white supremacy.
How has this voter suppression played out more recently in actual Black voting? According to the Brookings Institute (2019), U.S. presidential election overall voter turnout was relatively stable between 1980 and 2016 (there was a slightly higher turnout in 1992 and a dip in 1996 and 2000). Whites historically have had higher turnout than other ethnic groups. However, with Barack Obama’s nomination in 2008, Black voter turnout was within 1 percentage point of whites (65.2% compared to 66.1%) and was actually higher than white voter turnout during his re-election campaign in 2012 (66.6% compared to 64.1%). After this election, Black voter turnout dipped in 2016 to 59.6% compared to 65.3% for whites. The Black vote in 2016 was higher than Asians (49.3%) and Hispanics (47.6%).
Carol Anderson (2018) partially attributes the 2016 dip to manipulation and voter suppression by the Republican party. Southern white Republicans are currently proposing and passing legislation at the state level that designed to exclude Black voters from the polls. These new restrictions are based on vague rationales of “administrative efficiency” or “fiscal responsibility” but are window-dressing for voter suppression legislation to disenfranchise millions of people who traditionally lean Democratic.
A Washington Post (2018) article specifically linked the 2016 decline to the 2013 voter restrictions placed in a number of states “that had the almost-certain effect of driving down turnout among groups that tend to vote Democratic — including among Black voters.” The 2016 presidential election was the first under the more conservative Republican appointed Supreme Court justices who had gutted a significant section of the 1985 Voting Rights Act in 2013. The Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013) decision abandoned pre-clearance of voting changes through a major part of the legislation, the so-called ‘Title V’. This piece of legislation prevented Southern disenfranchisement of Black voters through gerrymandering or other subtle forms of exclusion. Title V required states with a history of voter suppression (identified by a formula which reviewed their disenfranchisement tactics, such as literary tests and poll taxes) to pre-clear changes in voting rights with the Department of Justice. In the half century preceding Shelby, the Justice Department had repeatedly used pre-clearance to block or deter Southern gerrymandering or other subtle attempts to devalue or prevent Black votes. Despite pre-clearance’s effective history of preserving voting equality, Chief Justice Roberts, speaking for the Shelby majority, declared that the era of Southern unlawful discrimination had effectively ended, and that it was constitutionally unfair to require only Southern states to obtain pre-clearance before changing their voting laws.
Under Shelby, any voting changes alleged to be discriminatory may still be challenged in Court after their adoption. However, elimination of pre-clearance allows Republican dominated (and white Supremacy aligned) conservative legislators to put discriminatory plans in place and win elections while awaiting the grinding court review. Although courts can strike down discriminatory voting laws, the judicial process and appeals allow the discriminatory laws to remain in force during the interim. Meanwhile, conservative legislators get elected and through legislation and regulation, perpetuate ‘innovate’ new surreptitious means of discouraging or disempowering Black voters. Freed from pre-clearance, numerous states began passing ‘voter reform’ bills designed to frustrate Black voting and in 2016, they appear to have worked.
Added to this insidious attempt to whitewash voting in 2016, Russian intervention unlawfully supported Trump with misleading information disbursed through social media. This effort was an attempt to alienate Democratic voters against their presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton (whom Russians viewed as a more effective adversary of Russian objectives). The social media campaigns slandered Hillary Clinton as a criminal while reminding Black voters that her husband’s ‘Crime Bill’ sent many Black men to prison with inordinately harsh sentences for minor crimes.
Politico (2018) describes how Russian agents posed and posted as Black activists and presented Clinton as a corrupt and evil person who could not be trusted. The continual theme pushed across social media platforms promoted the idea that Blacks were “better off without voting at all.” Another push to dilute the vote was advocating support for Jill Stein as the supposed “candidate of peace” to split off Democratic voters from Clinton, given her rather hawkish reputation as Secretary of State. These scare tactics targeted Purple (swing) states and even included people paid to go as Hillary Clinton in prison garb at political rallies. This social media campaign appears to have had a substantial impact on the Black voter turnout. Although Black women have for the last half century been the most reliable core group of Democratic voters, in 2016 their turnout dipped substantially with a 61% voter turnout, down from 74% in 2012 and 75% in 2008. It is unclear how many Black voters were influenced by this social media campaign but the dip in Black voter turnout can hardly be considered coincidental.
“To paraphrase George Orwell, there are those who feel that some voters are more equal than others. And that’s an attitude being implemented right now in some legislatures.” Columbia University history professor Eric Foner, (CNN, 2021)
Across the country, Black voters are currently being targeted by Republicans on a state and local level. Republican dominated legislatures have reduced the number of early-voting days and hours, mandated stricter voter identification, and limited the location and the number of ballot drop boxes. Demographic analysis has proved time and time again, that these restrictions have unduly effected and restricted Black voting. These legislative acts may initially appear to equally impact Black and white voters, but their selective enforcement shows their discriminatory intent and effect.
Black voters are more often economically disadvantaged or are working class with less control over work hours and more limited means of transportation than their white counterparts. Therefore, restriction of voting hours and location of polling places inordinately affects Black voters. More conspicuously, the selective way that voting drop boxes are eliminated from predominantly Black neighborhoods has demonstrated an overall goal to restrict and diminish Black voting. The premise for these changes according to the GOP is “election security” although no systemic election fraud has been identified anywhere in the country after multiple investigations and audits. This battle cry of fraud and stealing elections is a direct result of Trump losing the 2020 election.
“We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we’ve ever seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim Crow in new clothes.” Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock (2021)
The GOP has a right to fear losing its white majority share of the electorate. Non-white populations threatening white supremacy are growing in number. The Census Bureau 2020 report reveals that the largest segment of the overall population in the United States has remained white, but this population shrank by 8.6%. Meanwhile, communities of color increased in number and share with the Hispanic population growing by 23%, the Asian population by 35%, and the Black population by 5.6%. The multiracial population also grew at the fastest rate over the past decade with a 276% increase. These numbers have sent Republicans into a frenzy to suppress Black and minority voting even more aggressively.
The American Progress (2019) reports that the number of women of color now of voting age increased by 59% (13.5 million) since 2000 while non-Hispanic white women voters only increased 8% (6 million) during this time period. Demographic trends strongly suggest that non-white voters will constitute the majority of the American population by the end of this decade. In the 2018 election, voter turnout for women of color rose 15 percentage points compared to the 2014 midterm elections. Black women not only turn out faithfully for elections, but they traditionally bring family and friends with them. These factors suggest that women of color voters will continue to play a critical role in upcoming elections. Black women have historically been one of the most engaged voting blocs in the U.S. electorate.
According to the Washington Post (2020), overall Black voter turnout grew to 66% in 2020 from the 61% in 2016, even with CoVid making voting more difficult and in the face of increasing voter suppression laws. In the same year, Black turnout was at 70% across eight competitive purple states where the election was called within 5 percentage points of the candidates, up from 63% in 2016 in these same states.
In summary, the “Blacks don’t vote” myth scapegoats Blacks and obscures deliberate attempts to prevent them from voting. These ever-increasing numbers of Black voters and their high rate of participation, even in the face of legislation specifically designed to suppress their impact, disprove that myth. Demographic analysis has proved time and time again that these restrictions have unduly restricted Black voting. The Black vote must be protected at any cost if we view ourselves as a democracy and if we are to put an end to systemic Black voter suppression.
Click here for Part 2 of Black Voters Matter — Black Incarceration and Voter Suppression
