Darryl Paulson
Seventh in a series
In the first six articles in this series, I focused on the specific barriers confronting blacks seeking to exercise the voting franchise. In the next two articles, the focus is on how both the Democrats and Republicans adopted policies to suppress black voting.
The Union victory in the Civil War did not end the oppression of blacks. A new Florida Constitution limited the franchise to “free white males,” and, in 1865, the Florida Legislature passed the Black Codes, a series of laws establishing “a separate class of citizenship for blacks, making them inferior to whites.”
By 1876, Reconstruction was over and white political dominance was restored to the Democratic Party. Democrats adopted a new Constitution in 1885 described as a “white supremacy document.” This Constitution and the laws passed by the Legislature instituted multiple barriers to black voting, such as the white primary, grandfather clause, poll tax, literacy test, 8 ballot box law, long residency requirements and scores of other obstacles.
In 1889, the Legislature adopted a law allowing the State Board of Public Instruction to appoint three school board members for each county rather than have them elected. The purpose was to prevent the election of blacks and Republicans.
The same year the Legislature abolished elective government in Jacksonville for the same reason. Republicans had controlled Jacksonville since Reconstruction. This change not only ended black and Republican control of the city, but also ended popular control of local government.
The “solid South” came to dominate the politics of Florida and the rest of the South. From the presidential election of 1880 to 1948, the Democrats swept all of the electoral votes of the South with only two exceptions.
In 1920, Florida and several other Southern states supported Republican Herbert Hoover over Democrat Al Smith. Smith’s problem was being the first Catholic presidential candidate in an overwhelmingly Protestant South.
In 1948, Democrats from several Southern states walked out of the national convention after the party adopted a civil rights plank. A few weeks later, these delegates held their own convention and nominated Strom Thurmond of South Carolina to lead the States Rights or Dixiecrat Party. That party captured the electoral vote of four Southern states, but Florida remained loyal to Harry Truman and the Democrats.
Beginning in the 1930s, the NAACP began to push civil rights legislation in Congress. It would take three decades before any of it passed, and Florida congressmen helped lead the opposition to civil rights.
Florida U.S. Sen. Claude Pepper, today regarded as a liberal, was a staunch segregationist during his tenure in the U.S. Senate. In opposing the 1934 Federal Anti-Lynching bill, Pepper argued that “the colored race will not vote, because in doing so . . . they endanger the supremacy of a race that God has committed the destiny of a continent.”
Democratic dominance of Florida politics lasted almost 120 years until the mid-1990s. During most of that time, Democrats did everything possible to obstruct black voting. Unfortunately, instead of reversing those policies, Republicans instituted their own policies to impede black voting.
Next: Black Voter Discrimination in Florida: The Republican Party
