People died for the right to vote. Immediately after the U.S. Civil War there was a series of massacres of Black people, which were conducted, in part, to stop Black people from voting.
For decades after the Civil War, Black people were the majority of the population in Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. Both Alabama and Florida were over 40% Black.
Among these atrocities were:
- Memphis Massacre (May 1866): White mobs, including police, killed 46 African Americans and burned schools and churches.
- New Orleans Massacre (July 1866): Police and white mobs attacked Black citizens marching for voting rights, killing over 30 and wounding over 100.
- Camilla Massacre (1868): A march in Georgia led by Black legislator Philip Joiner was attacked, resulting in roughly a dozen deaths.
- Opelousas Massacre (1868): In Louisiana, white supremacists killed dozens, with estimates of over 200, to suppress Republican voting.
- Colfax Massacre (1873): One of the deadliest Reconstruction massacres, in which white militias killed around 150 Black men in Louisiana on Easter Sunday.
- Vicksburg Massacre (1874): White mobs killed dozens of Black people trying to protect a local official.
- Hamburg Massacre (1876): South Carolina white mobs targeted a Black militia, killing several men.
It wasn’t just in the South where Black activists were killed. Octavius Catto was murdered on election day in Philadelphia, Oct. 10, 1871, by a racist gang determined to stop Black people from voting. At least one other Black person was killed on the same election day.
The struggle over that history continues. It took years of organizing to place a statue of Catto on the south side of Philadelphia’s City Hall and to remove the statue of fascist Mayor Frank Rizzo — the same Rizzo whose police force framed the revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal, whom the capitalist establishment has tried to kill for decades, and now wants him to die in prison.
The elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina, was overthrown by a racist mob in 1898. Seventy-five years later, the Wilmington 10, who were anti-racist activists, were framed.
Between 30 and 80 Black people were killed in Ocoee, Florida, on election day in November 1920. Almost all Black people were driven out of the City in Orange County, where Orlando and Disney World are located.
NAACP member Elbert Williams was murdered in Brownsville, Tennessee on June 20, 1940, for encouraging Black people to vote.
The 37-year-old veteran Maceo Snipes was shot to death in front of his home on July 18, 1946, for having been the only Black person to have voted the day before in Taylor County, Georgia.
Harriette Moore and Harry T. Moore were murdered when their home was dynamited by the Ku Klux Klan on Christmas Day, 1951. The nearest hospital would not treat them because they were Black.
As a former president of the Florida state chapter of the NAACP, Harry T. Moore led campaigns to register Black voters. Because of the Moores’ efforts, Florida had more registered Black voters than any other Southern state at the time.
No one was ever prosecuted for their murders. Many people believe that the Lake County Sheriff had the Moores killed because of their efforts to defend the Groveland Four, who were four Black teenagers in Lake County, framed on phony rape charges.
Rev. George Lee was killed in Belzoni, Mississippi, on May 7, 1955, after being the first Black person to vote in Humphreys County since Reconstruction.
The 63-year-old veteran Lamar Smith was shot and killed on the Brookhaven, Mississippi, courthouse lawn on Aug. 13, 1955, after helping Black residents with absentee ballots.
The NAACP’s Mississippi State Field Secretary, Medgar Evers was assassinated in front of his home on June 12, 1963. His assassin wouldn’t be convicted until 1994.
Vernon Dahmer died on Jan. 10, 1966, after his Hattiesburg, Mississippi, house was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan. The president of the Forrest County NAACP chapter urged Black people to vote on the radio.
Also…
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer in 1964. Sixteen years later, Ronald Reagan deliberately chose to start his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, virtually over the bodies of these Black and Jewish martyrs.
Viola Liuzzo, the mother of an Italian-American family, was murdered by Klan member Gary T. Rowe on March 25, 1965. Liuzzo was killed following the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for voting rights.
Rowe was on J. Edgar Hoover’s payroll and was later given immunity from prosecution. The FBI targeted Viola Liuzzo’s husband, Anthony Liuzzo, and jailed the business agent of Teamsters Local 247 in Detroit.
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