When the United States Constitution was ratified (1789), a small number offree Blacks were among the voting citizens (male property owners) in some states.[1] Most Black men in theUnited States were, however, not able to exercise the right to vote until after theAmerican Civil War with theReconstruction Amendments. In 1870, the15th 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 formerConfederate andslave states implemented "Jim Crow" regulations that denied the vote to many Blacks.
"Black suffrage" in theUnited States in the aftermath of theAmerican Civil War explicitly referred to the voting rights of only Black men.[citation needed] Female suffrage, regardless of race, was only gradually introduced following the Civil War,beginning with Wyoming in 1869.
The passage of the19th Amendment, which was ratified by theUnited 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 .[2] Only after the passage of theTwenty-fourth Amendment and theVoting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965 did the exercise of the vote become more or less equal for Black women.
Beginning in1265, a small number of landed aristocrats and gentry had the right to vote for members of theParliament of England and Knights of the Shire. From 1432, onlyforty-shilling freeholders held the parliamentary franchise. Suffrage was restricted to males by custom rather than statute.[4]
Olaudah Equiano and theLondon Corresponding Society (founded 1792) argued for expanded suffrage.Also see:Radicalism (historical). The vote was restricted to adult males and also by property qualifications, but never by race. The first Black person known to have voted in a British election wasJohn London in 1749.
TheReform Act 1832 extended the vote to landed middle class men.
Incremental reform continued with variousReform Acts,
TheWest Indies Federation (1958–1962) was slated to become autonomous but never did; a number of its member states have since achieved autonomy.
Non-UKCommonwealth citizens residing in the UK have full voting rights as they are recognised as citizens. Prior to theBritish Nationality Act 1981 Commonwealth Citizens were officially calledBritish Subjects and always counted as such in law. When the firstBritish Nationality Act 1948 was passed it reconfirmed this right and also statutorily defined citizenship rights forBritish Protected Persons which before 1948 was granted solely by royal prerogative unlike for British Subject/Commonwealth Citizens.
Republic of Ireland citizens, although not Commonwealth Citizens still enjoy full voting rights in the UK, occupying the unique position of Foreigners with British subject hood.
Engraving of the first opening of theCape Parliament in 1854. The new constitution barred discrimination on the basis of race or colour and, in principle at least, the Parliament and other government institutions at the time were explicitly colour-blind.
Under Prime MinisterGordon Sprigg, the Colony passed the 1877 "Registration Bill", disenfranchising Black communal land owners.
TheFranchise and Ballot Act of 1892 raised the threshold for suffrage from £25 to £75, accomplishingde facto disenfranchisement of most non-White subjects, and also of poor whites (particularlyAfrikaners).
South Africagained control of the area during World War I. It eventually governedSouth-West Africa under apartheid laws and divided the area into ten bantustans.
Many residents recognizedSWAPO, not South Africa, as the legitimate authority. The United Nations recognized SWAPO as Namibia's legitimate representative in 1972.
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 (male) 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 (where most slaves were, as their presence was restricted in mainland France) 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 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte re-established slavery and, possibly owing to his disagreements withThomas-Alexandre Dumas, a black general, forbade Blacks and people of mixed-ancestry (mulâtres) 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 theFrench 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 ofSaint-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 subsequentRevolution and established the Republic ofHaiti. (Elections were held butthe democracy was not stable.)
France promoted amodel of assimilation according to which Blacks and indigenous people could gain voting (and other) rights by successfully conforming to French culture. These high-status Blacks were known aslesÉvoluées.
People living in French colonies primarily fell under theCode de l'indigénat.Lesindigènes had some voting privileges, but these could be modified without their consent.
Following the Revolution of 1848, France granted limited representation to theFour Communes of Senegal. Ordinary residents of these cities gained full voting rights in 1916 after the election ofBlaise Diagne.
Lamine Guèye (another Senegalese politician) also achieved expanded voting rights ("Loi Lamine Guèye") for people in the colonies.
^Walton Jr, Hanes; Puckett, Sherman C.; Deskins, Donald R., eds. (2012).The African American Electorate: A Statistical History. Vol. I Chap. 4. CQ Press. p. 84.ISBN978-087289508-9.
Beckman, Ludvig (2008). "Who Should Vote? Conceptualizing Universal Suffrage in Studies of Democracy".Democratization.15 (1):29–48.doi:10.1080/13510340701768091.S2CID144732902.
Paxton, Pamela; et al. (2003). "A half-century of suffrage: New data and a comparative analysis".Studies in Comparative International Development.38 (1):93–122.doi:10.1007/BF02686324.S2CID154786777.
Robinson, George M. Fredrickson Edgar E. (1995).Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa. Oxford University Press.
Sneider, Allison (2010). "The New Suffrage History: Voting Rights in International Perspective".History Compass.8 (7):692–703.doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00689.x.
