"A Chicken-Stealer Shall Lose His Vote": Disfranchisement for Larceny in the South, 1874-1890
2009; Southern Historical Association; Volume: 75; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-6893
Autores Tópico(s)American History and Culture
ResumoIN 1880 IN OCALA, FLORIDA, AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN NAMED Cuffie Washington tried to vote in the congressional election. When he entered the polling station, Democrats challenged his fight to vote because, they said, he had stolen three oranges. Washington conceded that he had been convicted of such a crime about a month before the election. Such charges, he said, had become more frequent because the election was close on hand. (1) Like Washington, several other African American men in the county were disfranchised that day for having stolen a gold button, a case of oranges, hogs, oats, six fish (worth twelve cents), and a cowhide. Allen Green, one of the alleged hog thieves confirmed Washington's analysis, agreeing that petit larceny charges had increased prior to the election: It was a pretty general thing to convict colored men in that precinct just before an election; they had more cases about election time than at any other time. (2) For white Democrats seeking to regain political power in the South after Reconstruction, these events in Florida demonstrated the success of a new scheme to disfranchise African Americans: denying the vote to individuals convicted of certain criminal acts. Between 1874 and 1882 a number of southern states amended their constitutions and revised their laws to disfranchise for petty theft as part of a larger effort to disfranchise African American voters and to restore the Democratic Party to political dominance in the region. These new laws were tools used by Democrats to prohibit Republicans from voting in some of the most tightly contested elections of this period. Cuffie Washington's experience was shared by others across the South. On the eve of the same election day in Marengo County, Alabama, a white Democratic Party worker named Ed Williams and an African American man named Silas Green had a heated conversation about whether Green would be allowed to vote. As several of Green's friends looked on, Williams read Green the section of the Alabama constitution disfranchising for crime and warned him against voting. Williams reminded Green that he had previously been arrested and that, consequently, he could not vote. Green argued back, denying that he had ever been convicted and insisting on his fight to vote. He told Williams that it was just a charge they made up and that he had been acquitted in court. Despite his protestations of innocence, Green did not attempt to cast a ballot the following day. (3) Two years later in Staunton, Virginia, an African American man named James McGuffin entered the courthouse to vote in an election there. Before he could cast a ballot, a white Democrat who was observing the proceedings stepped in to challenge him, saying McGuffin had been convicted of petit larceny the previous year and was thus ineligible to vote. McGuffin denied it. The judge allowed McGuffin to vote, but as soon as he cast his ballot a police officer arrested him for illegal voting. (4) Richard Harris, an illiterate African American man, also tried to vote that day in Gloucester County, Virginia. At the polls, a precinct judge asked Harris if he had ever been convicted of petit larceny. When Harris replied in the affirmative, the judge refused to let him vote. Later, in a deposition submitted for a congressional investigation, the Gloucester County court clerk testified that there was no record of Harris's conviction for any kind of larceny. He had been indicted for felonious assault, but the charges were dropped before the case went to trial. (5) The imposition of penalties, such as disfranchisement, as a consequence of criminal conviction has a long history that dates to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who denied certain rights to criminal offenders. A similar standard emerged in medieval Europe, where governments punished some serious criminal offenses with civil death. Individuals sentenced to death lost many legal rights, including the right of suffrage. …
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