EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS

1. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • Voting rights far from universal in the colonial and early national periods • Franchise typically restricted to white, male property-owners over twenty-one • Why were others excluded? • The U.S. Constitution and voting rights

2. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • Expansion of democratic politics in first half of the 19th century • Most property requirements for voting removed • Property requirements for office holding often remained • Some expansion of types of offices elected by “popular” vote • Presidential electors • During the first half of the 19th century, racial restrictions for voting made explicit • New Jersey’s 17-year experiment allowing women to vote abandoned

3. In many states, voting by voice replaced by printed ballot George Caleb Bingham, The County Election The secret ballot is a reform that is not widely adopted until the late 19th century

4. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • THE 15TH AMENDMENT: “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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Freedmen voting, SC, 1868

5. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • Black voting and political power during Reconstruction Hiram Revels

6. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • White backlash to the myth of “black rule” • Birth of a Nation (1915) • Disfranchisement • Residency requirements • Literacy test • “Understanding clause” • “Negro crimes” • Poll tax • Williams v. Mississippi (1898) • White primary

7. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment Seneca Falls Convention, 1848

11. Women’s participation in World War I

12. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • 17th Amendment – Direct election of U.S. Senators • Other voting restrictions in the early twentieth century • English-literacy requirements for immigrants • Pauper exclusion laws – 1930s

13. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • Part of Civil Rights Movement included the struggle to end legal disfranchisement of black voters in the South Attempting to register to vote in Forrest County, MS, 1964

14. EXPANSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS • Voting Rights Act of 1965