Black suffrage


Black suffrage refers to Black people's right to vote and has long been an issue in countries established under conditions of Black minorities as well as, in some cases, Black majorities.

United States

Suffrage in the United States has had many advances and setbacks. Prior to the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution some free Black men in the United States were given the right to vote. However, this right was often abridged, or taken away. Following Emancipation, Black people were theoretically equal before the law, including theoretical suffrage for Black women from 1920. Black men were given voting rights in 1870, while Black women were effectively banned until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
When the United States Constitution was ratified, a small number of free Blacks were among the voting citizens in some states. Most Black men in the United States were, however, not able to exercise the right to vote until after the American Civil War with the Reconstruction Amendments. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified to prohibit states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude." This was before former Confederate and slave states implemented "Jim Crow" regulations that denied the vote to many Blacks.
"Black suffrage" in the United States in the aftermath of the American Civil War explicitly referred to the voting rights of only Black men. Female suffrage, regardless of race, was only gradually introduced following the Civil War, beginning with Wyoming in 1869.
The passage of the 19th Amendment, which was ratified by the United States Congress on August 18 and certified as law on August 26, 1920 granted women the right to vote in all states. In fall 1920, many Black women showed up at the polls, but many existing hurdles for African Americans were particularly cumbersome in repressing. Only after the passage of the Twenty-fourth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965 did the exercise of the vote become more or less equal for Black women.

Australia

The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 restricted the right of Aboriginal Australians to vote in Australian federal elections. This Act was changed in 1962, when the Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended.

British Empire and United Kingdom

South Africa

Cape Colony

  • The Cape Qualified Franchise restricted voting by property ownership but not explicitly by race.
  • *In 1853, the Queen authorized a Cape Colony parliament, which drafted a Constitution with no explicit racial restriction.
  • *Cape Colony's "Responsible Government" Constitution, issued in 1872, explicitly prohibited racial discrimination.
  • *Under Prime Minister Gordon Sprigg, the Colony passed the 1877 "Registration Bill", disenfranchising Black communal land owners.
  • *The Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892 raised the threshold for suffrage from £25 to £75, accomplishing de facto disenfranchisement of most non-White subjects, and also of poor whites.

South Africa

Namibia

France

  • Before the Revolution, only some local elections were held, the first real national suffrage appeared in 1791.
  • From 1791, France installed several male suffrage systems, alternating between census and universal suffrage. In mainland France, there was no racial criterion to be a voter so technically from this date, Black voters existed and received the same rights as non-Blacks. They were still rare as segregation in France was not based directly on skin color or racialism but on the status as a slave or as a free human. Later it would be based on status as a mainland citizen or as a colony citizen.
  • From there, through the first half of the 19th century, frequent changes in the national government caused the colonies to have different rules than mainland France, often illegally. Several uprising occurred in the colonies during this period and the colonial rules diverged considerably from mainland France.
  • In mainland France:
  • * In 1794 the government abolished slavery.
  • * In 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte re-established slavery and, possibly owing to his disagreements with Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a black general, forbade Blacks and people of mixed-ancestry to enter mainland France.
  • * In 1815 slave trade was abolished, but not slavery
  • * In 1848 slavery is formally abolished in France and all slaves are freed.
  • In the French Colonial Empire, however, most indigenous people were not recognized as full French citizens and therefore often did not have the right to vote:
  • *Vincent Ogé, who had been working in Paris during the Revolution, returned to the island slave colony of Saint-Domingue and demanded voting rights. Ogé led an insurrection in 1790 and was executed in 1791. Enslaved people took control of the island in the subsequent Revolution and established the Republic of Haiti.
  • *France promoted a model of assimilation according to which Blacks and indigenous people could gain voting rights by successfully conforming to French culture. These high-status Blacks were known as les Évoluées.
  • * People living in French colonies primarily fell under the Code de l'indigénat. Les ''indigènes'' had some voting privileges, but these could be modified without their consent.
  • *Following the Revolution of 1848, France granted limited representation to the Four Communes of Senegal. Ordinary residents of these cities gained full voting rights in 1916 after the election of Blaise Diagne.
  • * Lamine Guèye also achieved expanded voting rights for people in the colonies.
  • *Residents of African colonies were permitted to vote in the 1958 French constitutional referendum, which established the French Community. Most colonies voted for independence, resulting in the creation of 17 Black nations in the Year of Africa.

Belgian Congo