New Deal programs that provided direct relief to the desperately poor, which included both whites and African Americans, won over many African-American voters to the Democrats. Until the Great Depression in the 1930s, African Americans tended to adhere to the Republicans who had fought to end slavery and grant them their freedom. Constitution forbade any state from denying the vote to anyone on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude (slavery). At the same time, the 15th Amendment to the U.S.

A man, African American or white, could vote in Iowa if he was 21 years old and a resident. Furthermore, after the southern surrender, the Republican Party was eager to grant African Americans the right to vote because they anticipated their votes would be strongly Republican, the party of Abraham Lincoln and the opponents of their former masters.Īt the behest of Alexander Clark, an African American and Iowan who fought in the Civil War, Iowa voters (entirely white males) went to the polls and approved a constitutional amendment striking the word 'white' from voting requirements in 1868. Freeing slaves where the Union Army took control weakened the strength of the Confederate Army. Iowa soldiers fighting in the South saw first-hand the evils of slavery. The Civil War began to reshape white attitudes toward African Americans. A strong majority in the state opposed intermarriage between whites and African Americans and held that African Americans were not as intelligent as whites. The 'black codes' that required African Americans to post financial bonds to live here and denied them the right to serve on juries were designed to discourage them from migrating to Iowa. While slavery might have been illegal in Iowa, many state laws discriminated against African-American residents. The first two constitutions adopted by the people of Iowa limited the suffrage (right to vote) to white males 21 years and older. A decade later, African Americans were not only free, but they were free citizens, and in Iowa, the path had been set to grant them the right to vote. Supreme Court ruled that slaves were property of their owners, were not citizens and had no legal rights at all. In the Dred Scott decision in 1857, the U.S. Each state, not the federal government, established its own voter qualifications, but by far, adult white males accounted for almost all of the ballots cast. Up until the Civil War, in most places, the right to vote in the United State was restricted to white males 21 years and older. What opportunities does the right to vote provide?

The white parade 1934 download