Laws and Resolutions of the State of North Carolina General Assemble at its Adjourned Session 1900, Raleigh, June 12, 1900

Laws and Resolutions of the State of North Carolina General Assemble at its Adjourned Session 1900, Raleigh, June 12, 1900

The elections of 1898 returned the Democratic Party to majority status in both houses of the General Assembly. The party largely replaced the Fusionist Republican and Populist candidates. Soon after the November election, the General Assembly held a Constitutional Convention in which the members voted for a resolution to disfranchise African Americans, stopping short of violating the Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution's race clause. The resolution called for a poll tax and literacy test for voter registration requirements. Persons who could vote or had relatives who could vote on January 1, 1867, however, could be exempt from the registration requirements. The resolution was ratified in August 1900, just before the General election.

North Carolina General Assembly

North Carolina General Assembly, Laws and Resolutions of the State of North Carolina General Assembly at its Adjourned Session 1900 (Raleigh: Edward & Broughton and E. M. Uzzell,State Printers, 1900).

1900-06-12

Erin Glant

Document

Government Document

(Section 1.) Every male person born in the United Sates, and every male person who has be naturalized, twenty-one years of age, and possessing the qualifications set out in this Article, shall be entitled to vote at any election by the people in the State, except as herein otherwise provided.

(Section 2.) He shall have resided in the State of North Carolina for two years, in the county six months, and in the precinct, ward, or other election district, in which he offers to vote, for months preceding the election: Provided, that removal from one precinct, ward or other election district, to another in the same county, shall not operate to deprive any person of the right to vote in the precinct, ward or other election district from which he has removed until four months after such removal. No persons who has been convicted, or who has confessed his guilt in open court upon indictment, of any crime, the punishment of which now is or may hereafter be, imprisonment in the State's Prison, shall be permitted to vote, unless the said person shall be first restored to citizenship in the manner prescribed by law.

(Sec. 3.) Every person offering to vote shall be at the time a legally registered voter as herein proscribed, and in the manner hearafter provided by law, and the General Assembly of North Carolina shall enact general registration laws to carry into effect the provistions of this Article.

(Sec. 4.) Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language; and before he has be entitled to vote, he shall have paid on or before the first day of May, of the year in which he proposes to vote, his poll tax for the previous year, as prescribed by Article V. Section 1, of the Constitution. But no male person, who was, on January 1, 1867, or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under the laws of the State in the United States wherein he then resided, and no lineal descendant of any such perosn shall be denied the right to register and vote at any election in this State by reason of his failure to possess the educational qualifications herein prescribed: Provided, he shall have registered in accordance with the terms of this section prior to December 1, 1908.

(Sec. 5) That this amendment to the Constitution is presented and adopted as one indivisible plan for the regulation of the suffrage, with the intent and purpose to so connect the different parts, and to make them so dependent upon each other, that the whole shall stand or fall together.