Reconstruction, at the end of slavery and the Civil War, involved ratification of three Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished the institution of slavery “except as punishment for crime”; the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, established birthright citizenship; and the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, removed race as a requirement for voting and thereby enabled universal manhood suffrage at age 21. The Reconstruction Amendments expanded citizenship and the vote to Black American men.
The political and military Reconstruction of the Republican Party, or Grand Old Party (GOP), required the former rebel Southern states to ratify the Reconstruction Amendments; provided federal military occupation to enforce Reconstruction; and enabled Black religious, secular, and educational institutions. Scholars have suggested that as many as 2,000 Black men participated in government at the local, state, and federal levels across the South from 1870 to 1901. The state of Florida elected Josiah T. Walls (1842-1905), a Black veteran of the Union army in the Civil War, to the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms from 1871 to 1876. Walls was a member of the Black and White (also called Black and Tan) coalition of the Republican Party in the state and the South.
Congressman Josiah Walls from Florida appears seated in the center bottom row. Other Black congressmen and senators are (Left to right) Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Representatives Benjamin Turner of Alabama, Robert DeLarge of South Carolina, Jefferson Long of Georgia, Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliot of South Carolina. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
13th Amendment Congressional Resolution
A resolution is passed by congress to amend the Constitution and sent to the states for ratification. When 3/4 of the states have ratified the amendment it is added to the Constitution.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the
number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Once the late rebel states accomplished readmission to the Union under Republican state governments, the Democratic Party exploited GOP interracial cooperation in campaigns to “redeem” the Southern states from “Black domination” and to impose restoration of White supremacy. Reconstruction formally ended in Florida and the region with the Compromise of 1877. The Solid Democratic South emerged, redeemed and unreconstructed, and North and South sectional reconciliation disadvantaged Black Americans.
“This is a white man’s government.” Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, September 5, 1868, p. 568.
Florida was the first state to introduce a poll tax to eliminate Black voting in 1888. Over time the poll tax became the most common disfranchisement mechanism in the South along with literacy and “understanding” tests and “grandfather” clauses. Literacy and “understanding” tests required Black men to demonstrate reading comprehension as determined by White voting registrars. “Grandfather” clauses required lineal descent of voting status that pre-dated Reconstruction; only White men had access to suffrage prior to Reconstruction. By the turn of the 20th century, the Republican Party had split along racial lines with the “Lily Whites” dominating the party, and the GOP shifted from racial inclusion to racial exile regarding Black Americans.
Skeleton ‘solid Southern shotgun’ holding shotgun at polls, to prevent African Americans from voting, 1879. Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, October 18, 1879, p. 1.
Sixty-sixth Congress of the United States of America; At the First Session,
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday, the nineteenth day of May, one thousand nine hundred and nineteen.
JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution extending the right of suffrage to women.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled(two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislature of three-fourths of the several States.
“ARTICLE ————.
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
[endorsements]
The 19th Amendment enfranchised women when ratified in August 1920. But voting prohibitions disfranchised the majority of Black women who lived in the South. The Ocoee Massacre responded to the possibility of expanding Black suffrage.
The liberalism of the New Deal in the 1930s did not repudiate traditional racial policy and practice in the expansion of the federal bureaucracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not endorse a federal anti-lynching law nor did he respond to the cruelty of the Claude Neal lynching in north Florida in October 1934. But, significantly, FDR and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt offered public and personal civility to Black Americans in a larger context of virulent anti-Black sentiment. Black voters outside the South began to transition to Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in 1932 and their participation in the New Deal coalition contributed to FDR’s landslide re-election in 1936.
Women casting their votes in New York City, ca. 1920s (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Eartha Mary Magdalene White, a prominent African American resident of Jacksonville, Florida, was known for her humanitarian and philanthropic endeavors, including organizing for the Suffrage Movement. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Dr. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune, the founder of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, founded the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (SFCWC) in 1920. Sykes Photo. “Dr. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune.” RICHES, accessed December 10, 2020, https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/items/show/5191.
24th Amendment Congressional Resolution
(Image courtesy of Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
Passed by Congress August 27, 1962. Ratified January 23, 1964.
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The nation ratified the 24th Amendment in 1964 that abolished the poll tax for federal elections. In 1966 the Supreme Court outlawed the use of poll taxes in state elections.
26th Amendment Congressional Resolution
The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, expanded the legal voting age to 18.
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Section 2
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Congressional Actions to Expand the Vote
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The signal achievement of the mid-20th century Civil Rights Movement was the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which enfranchised African Americans residing in the South after decades of anti-Black violence calculated to forestall voting efforts and legislating disfranchisement devices. The VRA enforced the 15th Amendment and, in combination with the 19th Amendment, which provided women’s suffrage, enabled African American access to the franchise throughout the nation. Into the 21st century, Congress amended the VRA five times to strengthen its provisions.
President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. appears in the photo standing behind Johnson among politicians and civil rights activists. (Photo courtesy of New Georgia Encyclopedia via Digital Library of Georgia.)
However, in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Eric Holder, Jr. Attorney General (2013) the Supreme Court weakened the VRA. Section 4(b) of the VRA required those jurisdictions which had voting tests in place on November 1, 1964 and with less than 50% turnout in the 1964 presidential election to secure federal authorization before making changes to state voting laws; this formula determined those districts that required pre-clearance before changing state voting laws. Section 5 prohibited eligible districts from changing voting requirements without pre-clearance. The Supreme Court ruled Section 4(b) unconstitutional but did not outlaw Section 5. The decision rendered Section 5 impossible to enforce while it enabled voting restrictions.
Expanding the Vote by State and Federal Legislation
State and federal legislation to expand the vote has included:
Early voting days – Florida Statute 101.657 (2017)
National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (Motor Voter Act)
Mail-in and Absentee Ballots – Help America Vote Act of 1992 S.26; S.26 Vote by Mail Act of 2019
Military and Overseas Voters – The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act of 2009; Expansion of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986.
Clearly, despite efforts to expand democracy over the long CRM of the 20th century, citizenship and voting rights continue as sites of contestation in U.S. political and popular culture into the 21st century.
Black United States Representatives in Florida
Josiah Thomas Walls (1871-1873, 1873-1876)
Corrine Brown (1993-2017)
Alcee Lamar Hastings (1993-2013, 2013-2021)
Carrie Pittman Meek (1993-2003)
Kendrick Brett Meek (2003-2011)
Allen Bernard West (2011-2013)
Frederica Smith Wilson (2011-2013)
Alfred “Al” James Lawson Jr. (2017-present)
Valdez “Val” Venita Demings (2017-present)
Block, Herbert, Artist. Continuation of a march / Herblock. , 1965. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003652661/.
Currier & Ives. The first colored senator and representatives – in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States. United States, 1872. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/98501907/.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. New York: Penguin Press, 2019.
Jones, Martha S. Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. New York: Basic Books, 2020.
Mahony, Felix, Artist. Your last chance to register. It’s so easy and a great privilege. , 1908. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016683285/.
Nast, Thomas. “Skeleton ‘solid Southern shotgun’ holding shotgun at polls, to prevent African Americans from voting, 1879.” Harper’s Weekly, October 18, 1879, p. 1.
Nast, Thomas. “This is a white man’s government.” Harper’s Weekly, September 5, 1868, p. 568.
Okamoto, Yoichi R. “Johnson signs Voting Rights Act.” Digital Public Library of America. https://dp.la/item/0a3041caaac9d5210e8c241326f2c6c0.
The election–At the polls / W.J.H. , 1857. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/97512416/.
“The Georgetown Election – The Negro at the Ballot Box.” Harper’s Weekly, March 16, 1867, p. 172.
Watts,
Jill. The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics
During the Age of Roosevelt. New York: Grove Press, 2020.
