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• • Woodrow Wilson dismissed AA advisors from federal government (1913-21)
• • Mississippi v Williams (1898) allowed state legislation that excluded AA from the voting register
• • Grandfather clauses, poll taxes, property qualifications, literacy tests, and white-only primaries prevented AA from voting
• • Lynchings of AA who exercised their right to vote or were politically active (early years)
• • In 1869, Abram Colby, AA member of the Georgia legislature was targeted by KKK and nearly whipped to death
• • An AA member of the Mississippi state senate named Charles Caldwell was shot over 30 times by whites and killed on Christmas day 1875
• • Guinn v US (1915) outlawed grandfather clauses in Maryland and Oklahoma
• • Smith v Allwright (1944) outlawed all kinds of white primary in Texas
• • 15th Amendment gave AA right to vote (1870) but it wasn’t enforced meaning very few AA actually managed to vote
• • President Johnson pushed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through congress which made conditions on voting illegal
• • In 1975, President Ford appointed the first AA Transport Secretary, William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.
• • Mississippi Freedom Ballot in 1963 and the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 demonstrated that AA would vote if they could, leading to more pressure on the federal gov to pass legislation on voting rights
• • Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 pressured Congress into passing the Voting Rights Act 1965