Black Voters Systematically Intimidated and Killed for Attempting to Register or Vote

Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, any Black person in the Deep South who attempted to register to vote or voted faced potential violence, economic retaliation, or death. Registrars refused to register Black applicants. Economic pressure — eviction by landlords, firing by employers — was applied to those who tried. In the most extreme cases, Black voter registration attempts triggered mob violence. The disfranchisement was total and terroristic: Black voter registration rates in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia were near zero by 1905.