Voter Suppression

AllMLK Series

Jan 20

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered for his role in the movement to obtain voting rights for Black Americans.

People lay a wreath at the memorial to Dr. King in Washington, DC. (Photo credit: Associated Press) — People lay a wreath at the memorial to Dr. King in Washington, DC. *(Photo credit:* *Associated Press*)

(Depiction of Black citizens casting their first vote following emancipation. Source: Harper’s Weekly) — *(Depiction of Black citizens casting their first vote following emancipation. Source:* *Harper’s Weekly*)

Until 1870, the vast majority of people eligible to vote in the US were white men. After a brief period following the passage of the 15th Amendment, when Black men were permitted to vote and hold office during the post-Civil War/ Reconstruction era, white supremacist governments figured out loopholes that would allow them to block the participation of the new Black voters.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses, as well as threatened and outright violence, effectively kept most black men and women (after the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920) from registering, voting, and being represented in government.

African-American/ Black Representation in Congress (1869-2018)

(Source: Congressional Research Service) — *(Source:* *Congressional Research Service*)

Voter suppression didn’t just occur in the South. Activists like Octavius Catto, a Philadelphia scholar and National Guardsman, faced great danger as they worked to register free Black citizens to vote during the 1800s. Catto was assassinated on election day, October 10, 1871, in front of a polling place in South Philadelphia.

Riders from the Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy visit a statue honoring Catto at Philadelphia’s City Hall in October 2020. (Photo credit: Matt Katz)

(Photo credit: Andrew Goodman Foundation) — *(Photo credit:* *Andrew Goodman Foundation*)

This voter suppression persisted even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

An FBI poster seeking information regarding the disappearance of three civil rights workers who were attempting to register Black Americans to vote in Mississippi when they disappeared in June 1964. The FBI investigation revealed the men were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. State and local law enforcement declined to investigate or prosecute the case and perpetrators that were convicted at that time served less than 6 years in prison. (Read more)

On March 7, 1965, King joined local civil rights workers, including 25 year old John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in Selma, Alabama for a march to protest the killing of a demonstrator by a state trooper and to advocate for Black citizens to be fairly allowed to register to vote. They were violently beaten by police in the event known as “Bloody Sunday.”

(Photo credit: PennLive) — *(Photo credit:* *PennLive*)

Bloody Sunday and the violent response to activism for voting rights around the country laid bare the violence of Jim Crow and ultimately helped galvanize support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Just 56 years ago, its passage made the US into a true constitutional democracy where citizens’ voting rights were not abridged for reasons of sex, race, or economic class status.