By Laranda Nichols
Times Staff Writer
April 17, 2003
BOAZ – It took an uprising in 1901 to build an Alabama constitution
aimed at disenfranchising blacks and poor whites and Wayne Flynt thinks
it may take a similar uprising to write a new one.
Flynt, an Auburn University history professor and author,
spoke to reporters Wednesday at Snead State Community College in Boaz.
He said the growth in the number of potential black voters
– 181,000 blacks to 232,000 whites – in the late 1800s and
the state’s poor economy prompted the drive for the 1901 constitution.
The deep divide between the Populists and the Conservatives
(later to become Democrats) resulted in knife fights at polling places,
lynchings and stolen elections.
Finally, he said, the builders of the 1901 constitution
decided to legalize what they had been doing, manipulating elections,
Flynt said, by writing it into the document.
The 1901 constitution convention was heavily flavored
by white men and it restricted voter eligibility.
Stumbling blocks
You had to own 40 acres of property; you had to pay a
poll tax that started at $6 an election and you had to pass a literacy
test. All were stumbling blocks for most blacks and poor whites.
“If you judge them by their intent, they did their
job brilliantly,” Flynt said. “There were 181,000 eligible
black voters in 1900 and only 3,000 in 1902. The number of eligible
white voters dropped from 232,000 to 190,000.”
Eventually, Congress granted the right to vote to all
citizens, including women. And federal courts stepped in many times
to correct Alabama’s inadequate programs for the mentally ill,
schools, inmates and others.
Those deficiencies were caused, said Flynt, because the
1901 constitution was drawn with the idea of keeping taxes low and
offering few social services.
Return to: Editorial
Index
Return to: Reform
in the news
