Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship
Pippa Holloway
Abstract
Felon disfranchisement laws were revised after 1865 to target African Americans newly freed and enfranchised by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. These laws were among the earliest methods to disfranchise African Americans, and they helped restore the Democratic Party to dominance in the region. Furthermore, an association with criminality justified the disfranchisement of the whole race. The legal tradition of infamy connected one's social, legal, and political status. The historical similarities between the legal status of convicts and slaves made extending infamy to the black popula ... More
Felon disfranchisement laws were revised after 1865 to target African Americans newly freed and enfranchised by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. These laws were among the earliest methods to disfranchise African Americans, and they helped restore the Democratic Party to dominance in the region. Furthermore, an association with criminality justified the disfranchisement of the whole race. The legal tradition of infamy connected one's social, legal, and political status. The historical similarities between the legal status of convicts and slaves made extending infamy to the black population after 1865 seem like an appropriate way to maintain suffrage for whites only. By the end of the nineteenth century, criminal disfranchisement affected convicts of all races. The public and degrading nature of punishment under the convict lease system affirmed the disfranchisement of all felons. Pardons to restore citizenship grew more common, allowing the more privileged to escape lifelong disfranchisement, but the process of suffrage restoration confirmed the place of felons as dishonorable outcasts. African American men in Knoxville, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, went to court in the early twentieth century to challenge these laws and secure their voting rights. Contemporary issues in felon disfranchisement—disproportionate racial impact, partisan enforcement, and obstacles to the restoration of voting rights—all have historical roots in the post-Civil War South.
Keywords:
felon disfranchisement,
felony disfranchisement,
infamy,
voting rights,
citizenship
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199976089 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199976089.001.0001 |
