Who May Vote?: Disenfranchisement in North Carolina, 1865-1900
Through Dec. 28, 2012
Wilson Special Collections Library
Grand Reading Room, 3rd floor
Free and open to the public
Information: Biff Hollingsworth, (919) 962-1345
Attempts to restrict the vote in North Carolina in the decades following the Civil War are the focus of a Wilson Library exhibit of documents this fall.
Who May Vote?: Disenfranchisement in North Carolina, 1865-1900 will be on view in the third floor Grand Reading Room through Dec. 28. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
Visitors will be able to see campaign literature and correspondence illustrating efforts at intimidation and political rhetoric to discourage voting among African Americans, women, and the poor.
Other items include:
- The broadside “An Address to the White Working Men of North Carolina” (circa 1865-1869), intended to draw newly freed blacks and poor whites (many of whom were Confederate veterans) to the Republican Party;
- The poster “The Negro Who Can Read May Vote. The Illiterate White Man Cannot Vote” (circa 1900), arguing that a constitutional amendment imposing strict new rules on voting registration—including a poll tax, literacy test, and other restrictive measures—would also severely limit the voting rights of the state’s illiterate white men; and
- Other campaign literature, correspondence, and political cartoons.
The exhibit is sponsored by the Southern Historical Collection and the North Carolina Collection.
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