High History 1 | Tennessee History for Kids

HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY
Part One: Reconstruction

A recruitment poster that encouraged African-American men to join the U.S. Army during the Civil War
IMAGE: Smithsonian Museum of American History

The period in the South immediately after the Civil War is known as Reconstruction, and it is possibly the most controversial era in American history. The most important issue during this era was suffrage (the right to vote) for African Americans.

After the war, there was an intense 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 aren't all organized exactly the same, but as a rule of thumb, the majority is supposed to rule.

A political cartoon in 1874

* 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, African-American men were allowed to vote. It would be decades before white and black women were extended the right to vote.)
* There were parts of the 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 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 the Tennessee government banned most ex-Confederates from voting. As you can imagine, this made many white Tennesseans very angry.

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. The most notable of them was Samuel McElwee of Haywood County, who served three terms.

But by 1890 there were no blacks in the state legislature, and wouldn't be again until the 1960s. Why?

SOURCE: Harper's magazine

The Klan

Through a combination of intimidation, violence, and legal maneuverings, black power at the voting booth was all but eliminated in Tennessee (as it was throughout most of the United States). And as far as intimidation and violence were concerned, the best example of what was taking place was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

The original KKK was founded in 1867 by six Confederate Army veterans in Giles County. Shortly thereafter they recruited former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest to be their Grand Wizard. For the next couple of years the KKK was a major force in Southern politics, terrorizing many blacks, whites who sympathized with and helped blacks, and so-called carpetbaggers from the North.

Since the Klan was a secret organization, there is no way to quantify its acts of violence and terror. But in 1867 the Klan was such a major factor in Tennessee that Governor William G. "Parson" Brownlow called a special session of the legislature to deal with it. He also sent spies to learn more about the secret organization. Two of them were murdered for their efforts.

Having said all this, however, the original Klan was virtually disbanded at the end of 1869 (which was before the election of African Americans such as Sampson Keeble, Samuel McElwee and others). Although occasional lynchings still took place in the South throughout the next several decades, the Ku Klux Klan as an organization disappeared from the landscape until it was revived near Atlanta, Georgia, in 1915.

A poll tax receipt

The Poll Tax and At-Large Seats

Acts of intimidation and lynchings obviously had a chilling effect on the democratic spirit in Tennessee. But in terms of real political power, such acts weren't nearly as important as the poll tax and the creation of at-large legislative districts.

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.

As you can see from this roster hanging in Legislative Plaza in Nashville, the Tennessee House of Representatives had four African Americans in 1885

To understand the effect of at-large legislative districts, you have 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 made it so cities could 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 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

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