May 10, 2007

The U.S. Civil war ended in 1865, and the Reconstruction Act created
five Confederacy districts essentially under Martial law protecting
the blacks and keeping the peace with Federal troops. The 14th
Amendment in 1868 gave blacks citizenship, and the 15th Amendment
created the ‘black vote.’ The U.S. Supreme Court left the
responsibility for citizens rights up to the individual states.

In 1877, at the end of Reconstruction, the conditions for the black

citizens deteriorated rapidly. The Southern states used poll taxes,
literacy tests and other schemes to deny most blacks their ‘black
vote.’ It was at this time the Ku Klux Klan began terrorizing the
blacks to the point of a mass migration Northward in what has been
referred as the Black exodus. The American Colonization Society was
founded and created Monrovia, a colony in Northwest Africa. Very few
blacks volunteered to re-colonize back to Africa. That colony is today
the African country…Liberia.

When investigating the evolution of the ‘black vote’ in American

politics, it seems the black citizen was a ‘race’ without a country or
any meaningful political representation. Then something happened that
made the ‘black vote’ very important…the Russian revolution in 1917.
That revolution was captured by the Marxist/Socialist ideological
movement that was developing in the growing struggle between
Capitalism and Socialism. After the revolution resulted in the
creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(USSR) the movement
spread to the U.S. and saw the founding of the Communist Party USA in
1919. White intellectual Idealogs quickly saw the potential of the
‘black vote’ for political influence and began pandering to the black
citizen and beginning to make the ‘black vote’ desirable.
This new ideological struggle would see the enfranchisement of the
black citizen and the importance of the ‘black vote.’ The ‘racial’
struggle would now join the ‘class’ struggle in American politics.

In the early 20th Century the Socialist movement began preaching

socialism would solve the problems of the working class…both black and
white. Many Black churches began to preach that religion and socialism
had the same goals. Some of the most influential white socialist
leaders helped the black leaders found organizations like the NAACP in
1909. And the black voter found themselves the central focus of the
Communist party. When the movement for desegregation and integration
came about there was a loud cry that it was a ‘communist plot’ to
bring about the destruction of America. Finally during the Truman
administration in the 1940′s, Truman issued an Executive Order ending
racial segregation in the U.S. military, and from that point on the
‘black vote’ has been a big part in the Political party competition
and struggle in the combination ‘class and racial’ problems of
America.