Sowing the Wind by Dorothy Overstreet Pratt

Author:Dorothy Overstreet Pratt [Pratt, Dorothy Overstreet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), 19th Century, Social Science, Discrimination, Political Science, Constitutions
ISBN: 9781496815491
Google: 7aM7DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 2017-11-06T00:34:32+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Defending the New Constitution in the Federal Courts

The ipse dixit promulgation of the Mississippi Constitution did not stop a backlash to it, although options for opposition began to dwindle. Nevertheless, white voters tended to close ranks and claim that the constitutional provisions for disfranchisement would be the salvation of the state. By the end of the decade white citizens were just beginning to realize what had happened. Voting dropped precipitously among white men and reached its nadir in 1892 and another low point in 1904.1 According to a study in the Nation in 1892, only 1,037 whites and 1,085 African Americans utilized the Understanding Clause to vote: “Under the provisions of the new constitution of Mississippi 68,127 of the 110,100 male whites over 21 were registered along with 8,615 of the 147,205 male Negroes over 21.” This effort at disfranchisement left a markedly reduced voting population, roughly one in seventeen among African Americans and two out of three whites.2 In the years following, as state leaders defended their constitution against national attacks, within the state even the former Democratic and Farmers’ Alliance opponents of the constitution rallied around the document.3 That did not mean, however, that factions no longer existed. They did.

Underneath the kudzu-like thicket of politics in the state were issues created by the new constitutional provisions; power struggles to control the future of the state emerged from the reduced voting population. The need for control connected strongly to perceptions of inflicted wrongs, of aspirations for the future, and of the confines of a meager budget. Beyond a reduction in the number of citizens exercising their franchise, other effects of the constitution were less apparent. Historians have argued for years as to who won the black-white county divides within this and other southern constitutional conventions. For example, Albert Kirwan’s argument concerning Mississippi in his book Revolt of the Rednecks was that the long-term effect was to empower the white counties at the expense of the old elites. According to Kirwan, the result was that Mississippi got James K. Vardaman and Theodore G. Bilbo as governor and senator. While he does not convincingly prove this difficult argument, to some extent he may have been right. From a positive aspect, undermining the power of the old elites may have enabled the state to protect itself (environmentally and progressively) against the worst incursions of industry and urban development. It may have protected the voice of lower-class white men, and it may have kept taxes low. But doing so came at a dire cost, particularly to the treatment of African Americans. Within the decade following the convention, former delegates in at least two major incidents tried to forestall erupting violence from whitecappers from the eastern part of the state. Reprieve was brief. By this point, under tremendous pressure, action became nearly impossible. Empowering white counties unleashed a whirlwind of violence, bigotry, and intimidation that held the state back for over a hundred years.

Among African Americans, however, there was a growing awareness of a need to react.

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