EIGHTH GRADE Part Twelve: Reconstruction A recruitment poster during the Civil War IMAGE: Smithsonian Museum of American History OK.. the school year is ALMOST finished. But before you go, we're going to tell you what happened in Tennessee after the Civil War. This period is known as Reconstruction, and it is possibly the most controversial era in American history, especially in the South. There is so much to talk about related to Reconstruction... and we suggest you click on some of these very interesting links to learn about them... such as the writing of Tennessee's new Constitution; Governor Parson Brownlow; and the origins of several of Tennessee's universities. The most important thing you need to understand has to do with voting rights. A political cartoon in 1874 After the war there was a huge struggle in the South related to control over the government. This got very ugly at times. Why? Well, think about the following points: * State and local governments in the United States are basically democracies. They have various organizations, but as a rule of thumb, the majority is supposed to rule. * With the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U. S. Constitution, former slaves were freed, became U. S. citizens, and were given the right to vote. (Actually only the men were allowed to vote. It would be decades before women were allowed to vote.) * There were parts of Tennessee -- especially rural counties of West Tennessee -- where African Americans outnumbered whites. *  The war killed tens of thousands of Tennesseans -- the vast majority of them being white men. So this left a lot of widowed women with children. And so keep in mind that these women didn't have the right to vote... adding to the sense of helplessness that they might have felt. Think about all three of these points. Can you understand why African Americans were excited? And can you understand why many white people were concerned, especially in parts of the South with high African-American populations? Samuel McElwee PHOTO: TN State Library and Archives Elections in Tennessee were very controversial after the war. In 1867 and 1869, for instance, many Confederate veterans were not allowed to vote, and you can imagine how angry that made them. Then, in the 1870s, African-Americans started being elected to public office for the first time ever in Tennessee. The first one was Sampson Keeble, a former slave and barber in Nashville who was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1872. By the mid 1880s there were four black men in the state house. Perhaps the most notable of them was Samuel McElwee of Haywood County. But by 1890 there were no blacks in the state legislature, and wouldn't be again until the 1960s. Why? The answer to that question is a painful one. The truth of the matter is that through a combination of intimidation, violence, and legal maneuverings, black power at the voting booth was done away with in Tennessee (as it was throughout most of the United States). In many parts of Tennessee, white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan began terrorizing blacks (to scare them away from voting), and some whites who sympathized with blacks (to run them out of the state). Some black men were told that if they dared cast a vote that they would be beaten, or that maybe their crops would be set on fire, or some such thing. Many of them were, in fact, taken out of their homes and whipped or beaten. A poll tax receipt These acts of intimidation weren't nearly as important as the poll tax, however. In 1870, as a part of Tennessee's new constitution, the state poll tax (or tax on the act of voting) was legalized. It took several years for the General Assembly to enact a poll tax, but it did in 1889. The poll tax had the effect of reducing the number of poor people who voted. And since most African Americans were poor, it greatly reduced the number of black people who voted. The Tennessee House of Representatives had four African Americans in 1885 The other way African Americans were taken out of the legislature requires you to understand some mathematics. After the Civil War, the black populations in Tennessee's cities grew dramatically. By the 1870s there were parts of Nashville and Memphis that were predominantly African American. At that time, cities such as Nashville and Memphis were carved up into voting districts. One part of Memphis would elect one person to its house district, and another part of Memphis would elect another person to a different house district. Since people had a tendency to vote for someone of their race -- we won't try to explain or defend this practice, but we will say that it has happened -- the white parts of town generally elected white house members, while African-American parts of town were more likely to vote for black candidates. Eventually, to reduce or completely eliminate black lawmakers, the legislature got rid of separate districts for Tennessee's cities and instead made it so that cities could instead elect candidates on an at-large basis. Nashville, for instance, might have six House seats designated for it. There might be thirty people in Nashville running for those six seats. Everyone who voted -- regardless of what part of town -- got to vote on those six seats, with the top six vote-getters winning the election. A gathering of black dentists in Chattanooga in 1948 PHOTO: TN State Library and Archives If you think about it, you can understand why it was practically impossible for black candidates to get elected to the state house or state senate under this system. A city like Memphis or Nashville might be twenty or thirty percent black. But so long as white voters continued to vote for an all-white ticket, those twenty or thirty percent votes weren't going to result in the election of any black elected officials. By the way, this practice of cities electing people to the state legislature on an "at-large" method actually remained in place until the state constitution was changed in 1965 (and the first election under the new change wasn't until the fall of 1972). So... now that you hopefully understand all this, you should understand why it was that between about 1890 and the 1960s there were very few African-American elected officials in Tennessee. It wasn't because there weren't African Americans who wanted to hold such offices. But black Tennesseans just had very little power at the ballot box. Many of them were afraid to vote, or couldn't afford to pay their poll taxes. And even if they did pay their poll taxes and vote, the "at large" system made it practically impossible for a black person to get elected. Rep. John Boyd PHOTO: TN State Library and Archives LINKS The Tennessee State Library and Archives has a wonderful web site devoted to African-American legislators in 19th century Tennessee. The site is very detailed, and includes biographical descriptions of black legislators and descriptions of the bills proposed by them. Click here to be taken to it. QUIZ 1) The first African American was elected to the Tennessee General Assembly in what year? 2) A tax on the act of voting is a _____ tax. 3) Explain what the difference is between a city having distinct voting districts and having an at-large system of electing public officials. For quiz answers, click here.