The Quest for Black Voting Rights in New York State

Liebman, Bennett

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3240214

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Although many of these provisions appeared in southern state constitutions and entrenched slavery in various ways in the antebellum era (Herron, 2017), these provisions also appeared in a number of northern state constitutions (Weiner, 2013). Prior to ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, most northern state constitutions explicitly limited voting to whites or, in the case of New York, required blacks to hold a certain amount of property in order to vote, while imposing no such property requirement on whites (Liebman 2018, p. 387; Tarr, 1998, pp. 106, 107; Wesley, 1948, p. 166).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don’t You be My Neighbor: Support for Racial-Exclusion Constitutional Provisions in Mid-19th Century Indiana and Illinois

Heckelman

Dinan

2021

American Politics Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Racially discriminatory provisions in the U.S. Constitution and southern state constitutions have been extensively analyzed, but insufficient attention has been brought to these provisions when included in northern state constitutions. We examine constitutional provisions excluding blacks from entering the state that were adopted by various northern states in the mid-19th Century. Previous scholarship has focused on the statements and votes of the convention delegates who framed these provisions. However, positions taken by delegates need not have aligned with the views of their constituents. Delegates to state constitutional conventions held in Illinois in 1847, Indiana in 1850 and 1851, and Oregon in 1857 opted to submit to voters racial-exclusion provisions separate from the vote to approve the rest of the constitution. We exploit this institutional feature by using county-level election returns in Illinois and Indiana to test claims about the importance of partisan affiliation, religious denomination, social-welfare policy concerns, labor competition, and racial-threat theory in motivating popular support for entrenching racially discriminatory policies in constitutions. We find greater levels of support for racial exclusion in areas where Democratic candidates polled better and in areas closer to slave-holding states where social-welfare policy concerns would be heightened. We find lower levels of support for racial exclusion in areas (in Indiana) with greater concentrations of Quakers. Our findings are not consistent with labor competition or racial-threat theories.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%