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Disenfranchisement Thesis

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Disenfranchisement. A wide-spread problem that has plagued humanity from the earliest of days. Disenfranchisement means the state of being deprived of a right or privilege, especially the right to vote. From 1100 BC and on people, especially minorities, have had their rights taken away by the more dominant race, religion, or gender. The most specifically remembered case of disenfranchisement was in America from 1870-1965, trying to keep freed black slaves from going to the poll. This racially charged period still has effects on social society today and influences the relations between whites and people of color. The American Civil War ended in 1865, marking the start of the Reconstruction Era in the eleven former Confederate states. Congress …show more content…

The act imposed penalties for conspiracy to deny black suffrage. These measures led to the demise of the first Klan by the early 1870s. Nevertheless, new paramilitary groups released a second wave of violence resulting in over 1,000 deaths, usually black and/or Republican. The organizations that arose in the mid to late 1870s were part of a continuing rebellion in the South after the Civil War, as armed veterans in the South resisted social changes. Such groups included the White League, the Red Shirts, and the Knights of the White Camellia. Compared to the Klan, they were open societies and better organized but never had the gigantic effect the Klan had. They however did open the door for Democrats to regain political control in the South once more and succeeded in driving many blacks in Southern states away from the …show more content…

From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan’s goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by Southern blacks after the Civil War. At first it was formed as a social club for Confederate soldiers after the war, but it soon progressed to be one of the biggest terror groups in American history. Most Klan action was designed to intimidate black voters and white

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