Page 5 - Bulldogs Declassified Final

Photo Credit: Erica Fox Washington

This monument is at the bottom of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

When your children shall ask you in time to come saying, "What mean these 12 stones?" Then you shall
shall tell them how you made it over -Joshua 4:21-22

-After Reconstruction ended, poll taxes, literacy tests and threats of violence kept many Black
men from registering to vote and going to the polls. This became a standard practice throughout
the Southern states, resulting in the disenfranchisement of a suppressed Black electorate (DOJ,
2013; Jeffries, 2009; Packard, 200; Mack et,al, 2016).
-The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 denied people of Chinese ancestry the ability to become
naturalized citizens, making them ineligible to vote.

-In the 1900s, women fought for the right to vote. In 1920, women won the right to vote but
Black women were still disenfranchised in many states due to Jim Crow laws and they faced heavy
discrimination at the polls. The 1943 Magnuson Act permitted some Chinese immigrants to
become naturalized citizens. By 1952, all people of Asian ancestry in the US were finally granted
the right to vote.

-White Southerners and state sponsored suppression of legislation combined to result in the
limited ability of African Americans to exercise their power to vote. Black resistance to White
supremacy in Southern states is well documented (Jeffries, 2009).

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