Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1908 - Softcover

Riser, R Volney

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080715010X ISBN 13: 9780807150108

Verlag: Louisiana State University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jim Crow strengthened rapidly and several southern states adopted new constitutions designed primarily to strip African American men of their right to vote. Since the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited eliminating voters based on race, the South concocted property requirements, literacy tests, poll taxes, white primaries, and white control of the voting apparatus to eliminate the region's black vote almost entirely. Desperate to save their ballots, black political leaders, attorneys, preachers, and activists fought back in the courts, sustaining that resistance until the nascent NAACP took over the legal battle. In Defying Disfranchisement, R. Volney Riser documents a number of lawsuits challenging restrictive voting requirements. Though the U.S. Supreme Court received twelve of these cases, that body coldly ignored the systematic disfranchisement of black southerners. Nevertheless, as Riser shows, the attempts themselves were stunning and demonstrate that African Americans sheltered and nurtured a hope that led to wholesale changes in the American legal and political landscape. Riser chronicles numerous significant antidisfranchisement cases, from South Carolina's Mills v. Green (1985), the first such case to reach the Supreme Court, and Williams v. Mississippi, (1898), the well-known but little-understood challenge to Mississippi's constitution, to the underappreciated landmark Giles v. Harris -- described as the "Second Dred Scott" by contemporaries -- in which the Court upheld Alabama's 1901 state constitution. In between, he examines a host of voting rights campaigns waged throughout the country and legal challenges initiated across the South by both black and white southerners. Often disputatious, frequently disorganized, and woefully underfunded, the antidisfranchisement activists of 1890--1908 lost, and badly; in some cases, their repeated and infuriating defeats not only left the status quo in place but actually made things worse. Regardless, they brought attention to the problem and identified the legal questions and procedural difficulties facing African Americans. Rather than present southern blacks as victims during the roughest era of discrimination, in Defying Disfranchisement Riser demonstrates that they fought against Jim Crow harder and earlier than traditional histories allow, and they drew on their own talents and resources to do so. With slim ranks and in the face of many defeats, this daring and bold cadre comprised a true vanguard, blazing trails that subsequent generations of civil rights activists followed and improved. By making a fight at all, Riser asserts, these organizers staged a necessary and instructive prelude to the civil rights movement.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

R. Volney Riser is cochair of the Department of History and Social Science at the University of West Alabama in Livingston.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"A book that could easily be read and taught in conjunction with the great works that focus on civil rights in the United States." -- Journal of American History

"This study contributes to the common knowledge of black suffrage issues during the Jim Crow era by approaching the topic from a new angle. It proves that there was much local black voting rights activism prior to the formation of the NAACP, and it traces the story with engaging narrative, thorough primary source documentation, and excellent legal analysis." -- American Historical Review

"A unique and valuable contribution to African American and southern history." -- Journal of Southern History

In Defying Disfranchisement, R. Volney Riser documents a number of lawsuits challenging various requirements -- including literacy tests, poll taxes, and white primaries -- designed primarily to strip African American men of their right to vote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Twelve of these cases wended their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that body coldly ignored the systematic disfranchisement of black southerners. Nevertheless, as Riser shows, the attempts themselves were stunning and demonstrate that even at one of their bleakest hours, African Americans sheltered and nurtured a hope that would lead to wholesale changes in the American legal and political landscape.

R. Volney Riser is editor of the Alabama Review and chair of the department of history and social sciences at the University of West Alabama in Livingston.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Louisiana State University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 080715010X
• ISBN 13: 9780807150108
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 338
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland