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EXPOSING THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH: IDA B. WELLS
Reconstruction Era
Congressional reconstruction aimed to readmit the South and establish a society where Blacks and Whites can coexist. The South, however, resented this.
Amendments
Lincoln and Thirteenth Amendment
(Library of Congress)
"This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am president it shall be a government for white men"
~ Andrew Johnson, U.S. President (1865-69)
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery. Following the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment, efforts to establish equality were undermined by white southerners.
"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."
~ Thirteenth Amendment
Colfax Massacre
Louisiana's 1872 governor election caused anxious white Southerners formed the"White League" to attack Blacks.
On April 13, 1873, KKK and White League members surrounded an all-Black militia controlled courthouse. After the militia surrendered, the Whites continued to murder them: around 150 were massacred.
“This is a White Man’s Government,” Harper’s Weekly, September 5, 1868.
(Library of Congress)
"The bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era, the Colfax massacre taught many lessons, including the lengths to which some opponents of Reconstruction would go to regain their accustomed authority. Among blacks in Louisiana, the incident was long remembered as proof that in any large confrontation, they stood at a fatal disadvantage."
~ historian Eric Foner writes in Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877
In 1950, Louisiana created a plate and called it a "riot"
(Smithsonian Magazine)
Restricting Votes
Literacy Tests
"There are denials of 'the right to vote . . . in some places ... by the arbitrary or discriminatory application of various registration procedures, such as . . . the rejection of applicants for registration, or the removal of voters from the rolls, on grounds of minor technical errors in the completion of required forms; . . . applying any or all of [specified registration requirements] . . . to some would-be voters but not to others, or applying them differently to different persons; . . . providing assistance to some would-be voters but declining to provide it for other'"
-Douglas B. Maggs and Lawrence G. Wallace in Congress and Literacy Tests: A Comment on Constitutional Power and Legislative
Literacy Tests prevented Black votes. Administrators rigged the system so Blacks couldn't pass.
For example, Blacks had to write part of the Constitution from memory while Whites could copy the text.
White Literacy Test
"SECTION 20: That no person shall be imprisoned for debt."
Black Literacy Test
"SECTION 260: The income arising from the sixteenth section trust fund, the surplus revenue fund, until it is called for by the United States government, and the funds enumerated in sections 257 and 258 of this Constitution, together with a special annual tax of thirty cents on each one hundred dollars of taxable property in this state, which the legislature shall levy, shall be applied to the support and maintenance of the public schools, and it shall be the duty of the legislature to increase the public school fund from time to time as the necessity therefor and the condition of the treasury and the resources of the state may justify; provided, that nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to authorize the legislature to levy in any one year a greater rate of state taxation for all purposes, including schools, than sixty-five cents on each one hundred dollars' worth of taxable property; and provided further, that nothing herein contained shall prevent the legislature from first providing for the payment of the bonded indebtedness of the state and interest thereon out of all the revenue of the state."
Poll Tax
Poll tax notice from Amarillo, Texas, 1960s.
(National Museum of American History)
Poll Tax Receipt
(Smithsonian National Museum of American History)
Poll Taxes were enforced in many states. The “grandfather clause” allowed whites to be excused, yet Blacks were excluded.
Grandfather Clause
Those who could vote before 1867 were excused from educational, property, or tax requirements. However, Blacks could not vote until the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.
January 1879 edition of Harper's Weekly poking fun at the use of literacy tests for blacks as voting qualifications.
(NPR)
Southern States denying the blacks to vote.
(Virgina Studies)