Alabama Constitutional Convention: White Supremacy Constitution Becomes Blueprint for Southern Disenfranchisement

The Alabama Constitutional Convention adopted a new state constitution explicitly designed to eliminate Black voting while maintaining white political supremacy through facially neutral provisions. Convention president John Knox declared in his opening address that the convention’s purpose was “to establish white supremacy in this State” within constitutional limits, creating a template that other Southern states would follow.

The 1901 Alabama Constitution imposed interlocking barriers to voter registration: cumulative poll taxes of $1.50 per year (approximately $50 in current dollars), residency requirements, literacy tests requiring applicants to “read and write any article of the Constitution,” and “good character” requirements subject to registrar discretion. The grandfather clause temporarily exempted whites who had served in wars or were descendants of veterans, while subjecting all Black applicants to the full battery of discriminatory requirements.

The convention delegates spoke openly about their discriminatory intent. Delegate John Fielding Burns said the goal was to “eliminate the ignorant negro vote” while preserving “the vote of every white man.” Knox acknowledged that the provisions were designed to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment through ostensibly race-neutral requirements that would be administered discriminatorily. “The justification for whatever manipulation of the ballot that has occurred,” Knox argued, “is the menace of negro domination.”

The results were immediate and devastating. Before the convention, an estimated 180,000 Black Alabamians were registered to vote. By 1903, only 2,980 remained on the rolls—a 98% reduction. White registration declined only slightly, as registrars exempted white applicants from requirements or coached them through tests. In some Black Belt counties, not a single Black voter remained registered.

Alabama’s constitution became the model for other states. Mississippi had pioneered constitutional disenfranchisement in 1890, but Alabama’s more elaborate scheme proved more durable. Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma adopted similar provisions. The Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene in Giles v. Harris (1903) confirmed that federal courts would not enforce Black voting rights.

The 1901 Alabama Constitution remained in effect for over a century, with its discriminatory provisions gradually invalidated by federal courts and the Voting Rights Act but never formally replaced. Only in 2020 did Alabama voters remove explicitly racist language from the document, though the structural barriers to voting it created continued to shape Alabama politics and inspire modern voter suppression tactics.