Black Voting Rights: The Fight for Equality

The right to vote is the most fundamental political right. Without it, it is difficult for people to defend their families, their property and their individual rights. For most of the time since emancipation, the vast majority of African-Americans who lived in the South were denied the right to vote and without it had no weapon to fight economic exploitation, legal injustices, and vast personal indignities. Despite the efforts of groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and victories in the courts against some of the legal devices that had been devised to deny black people the vote, the middle of the twentieth century arrived with most black southerners still unable to register and elect officials sympathetic to their needs. The leaders of the civil rights movement that began to coalesce in the 1950s were always aware that voting rights would play a primary role in protecting the other rights being won. This collection of documents, related to black voting, tells the story of how black men acquired the ballot in the decade after the Civil War and then how, in the South at least, it was taken from them. This portfolio includes a Study Guide with reproducible student activities. 4 Illustrated Broadsheet Essays: * Reconstruction * Disfranchisement * Blacks Organize * We Shall Overcome 19 Primary Source Documents: * "This is a White Man's Government" cartoon by Thomas Nast, Harpers Weekly, 1868 * Two Thomas Nast cartoons, Harper's Weekly, 1868 * "It is Only a Truce To Regain Power..." cartoon by Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, 1872 * "The First Colored Senator and Representatives: In the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States" lithograph by Currier & Ives, 1872 * "Canvassing for Votes" cartoon by R.N. Brooke, 1872, and "Black Political Parade" cartoon, 1876, both in Harper's Weekly * "The Political Pinkertons" cartoon by Grant Hamilton, Judge, 1892 * "Negro Rule" cartoon, 1900 * "Opinion of W.E.B. DuBois," Crisis, 1920 * "Election Day in Florida" article by Walter F. White, Crisis, 1921 * "Nixon vs. Herndon," Supreme Court Reports 536, 1926 * "Why the Poll Tax Must be Repealed," broadside, NAACP, 1944 * J.L. LeFlore to Thurgood Marshall and Thurgood Marshall to Robert E. Hannegan, letters, 1946 * Committee For Alabama, letter, 1946 * "Hands Off Democracy," handbill, NAACP, c. 1949 * "M is for Mississippi and Murder," pamphlet, NAACP, 1955 * "Hands that Picked Cotton ... "poster, Voter Education Project, c. 1965 * "100% Registered to Vote," window sticker, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1990 * Profiles of Lowery, King and Young on Voter's Card, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1990 * "The Fifteenth Amendment" poster, 1870, a reproduction of hand-tinted lithograph by James C. Beard (1837-1913)