At the founding of our republic, free Black men voted in several northern states; like today, their ability to vote caused an early split in American politics.
For example, free Black men could vote in New York state until the Democratic-Republicans there began to worry out loud that they could lose control of the State Assembly to the Federalists, who were generally the party for which Black men voted.
Their main claim for a need for voter suppression laws was that some of the Black men weren't "really eligible to vote" but were instead "illegals" - escaped slaves from the South - showing up just to illegally vote for anti-slavery Federalists.
To increase the general hysteria about "voter fraud" and simultaneously tamp down the Black vote, the Democratic-Republicans proposed legislation to throw up even more barriers to voting.
As Leslie M. Harris notes in her brilliant history of that time, The Shadow Of Slavery: African Americans In New York City, 1626-1863:
"Because of the role of the Federalist Party in securing emancipation for New York's slaves and the Democratic-Republican Party's ties to the slave south, New York's blacks largely supported the Federalists. The Democratic-Republican Party in New York City exacerbated this antagonism by focusing on blacks as a key voting bloc that could prevent a Democratic-Republican ascendancy in local and state politics."
In similar fashion, Republicans in multiple states have been actively working to block the Black vote ever since the Voting Rights Actwas passed in 1965, as I document in detail in The Hidden History of the War on Voting.
For example, in future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rhenquist's 1960s Operation Eagle Eye, he and other Republicans prowled outside polling places in Arizona to threaten and intimidate Black, Hispanic and Native American voters, loudly challenging their right to vote.
More recently, over a dozen Republican-controlled states just expanded this "right to harass" to include allowing armed militia members to "observe" people casting their votes within polling places during the 2022 and 2024 elections.
As Harris notes, this is nothing new:
"Democratic-Republican inspectors at polling booths attempted to dissuade blacks from voting by harassing them for proof of their freedom. In 1811, the Democratic-Republican-dominated New York State legislature made such harassment legal by passing '[a]n Act to prevent frauds at election and slaves from voting.'"
a.image2.image-link.image2-242-715 { display: inline; padding-bottom: 33.84615384615385%; padding-bottom: min(33.84615384615385%, 242px); width: 100%; height: 0; } a.image2.image-link.image2-242-715 img { max-width: 715px; max-height: 242px; } One of America's first anti-Black voter suppression laws - posted at the New York Historical Society by Ted O'Reilly, Curator of Manuscripts
It was one of the first voting laws that specifically targeted otherwise voting-eligible African Americans. Under the "Act To Prevent Frauds":
"Blacks who wished to vote ï rst had to obtain proof of their freedom from a 'supreme court justice, mayor, recorder, or judge of any court of common pleas' in the state; pay that person to draw up the necessary certificate; and then bring this proof of their freedom to the polls."
It didn't work to keep the New York Assembly in Democratic-Republican hands, however, as Harris notes:
"When a close Assembly election in 1813, in the midst of war, was declared in favor of the Federalists, Democratic-Republicans blamed the victory on the three hundred black New York City voters."
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