Climbing Up To Glory Essay

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Some might argue that the right to free speech or the right to own property is what makes someone a true American citizen. In Wilbert L. Jenkins’s book, Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the right to vote is considered a major accomplishment when gaining the rights of an American citizen. These voting rights are so important that African Americans fought constantly to acquire them. Even as whites built barricades to stop the newly freed slaves from voting, African Americans rose above to claim their voting rights and political interest. Ever since the founding of the United States of America, it was common to see a slave of African descent in a white American citizen’s household. …show more content…

First came the poll taxes, which required all voting citizens to pay a fee when they entered their ballot. Of course, most of the newly freed slaves had no money to spare and therefore, were not able to submit their ballot at the poll booths. Then there was the literacy test that filtered out the voters who could not read, which made it illegal for them to vote. Most African Americans at the time did not have enough education to pass the literacy test since they only knew labor their whole lives and were often beaten if they attempted to learn. With the literacy test in place, only a few, educated freedmen could pass the test and enter the voting booth. With the literacy test set in place, some whites could not vote so the grandfather clause was passed. This allowed the illiterate whites to enter the poll booth without being questioned. The clause stated that if an American, male citizen had a grandfather who could vote, that citizen could also vote without even looking at the literacy test. In 1870, this was the first generation of African Americans who could vote, so none of their ancestors voted before, and therefore, this clause was not applied to …show more content…

Southern whites were upset that even a few of the former slaves could make the same political decisions as them. So many whites set out to go to even the longest extents to stop this unspeakable menace. Organized with the goal of stopping every dark colored person from voting, the Ku Klux Klan, which was first formed in 1866, made a statement by intensifying their violent and intimidating acts. Their major goal was “to intimidate blacks so that they would fear for their lives and stop supporting the Republican Party” (222). To accomplish this, the Klansmen set out wearing their full white cloaks to whip, shoot, and rape the freed slaves who were still able to vote. They made camp at the poll stations used by African Americans and gave traumatizing warnings to the freedmen who were able to vote. The Ku Klux Klan greatly reduced the number of freedmen from voting yet some of them were so determined that they found ways to submit their ballots and suffered the consequences shortly after. This is a great example of how determined African Americans were to exercise their voting

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