The Afro-American Council and Its Challenge of Louisiana’s Grandfather Clause

Abstract

Though the black American had been freed and enfranchised, “he is only nominally free. His rights are abridged; he is an American only in name,” exclaimed the young black journalist John E. Bruce, a.k.a. Bruce Grit, in 1877 (quoted in Foner 1972, 489). In many ways Bruce was correct: immediately following the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, the South resumed its plans of social engineering to the extent that the federal Constitution, existing laws, and northern public opinion would allow. Despite the existence of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed African Americans full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations, theaters, and other public amusement, many southern states disregarded the law with impunity. Backed by violence, intimidation, and the invocation of racial politics, southern states rewrote their constitutions and passed legislation stripping their African American citizens of their civil, social, and political rights (Woodward 1951, 1966; Weaver 1969; Ayers 1992; Perman 2001; Alexander 2004)