The Tougaloo College Archives provide rich resources for studying the struggle to register African Americans to vote in Mississippi. headline 'I didn't know colored people could vote' above
photo of African American man in 1964 A wealth of documents tell the story of how a determined group of people from Mississippi and from outside the state, both black and non-black, and of all ages transformed the fundamental political structure of Mississippi through grassroots organizing and through direct public challenges to a system founded on, and governed by, the belief and practice of white supremacy. Since at the least 1890, when its constitution was ratified, the state of Mississippi had instituted legislative measures to prevent blacks from participating in the electoral process. These measures included the payment of a poll tax, the use of a literacy test, and the requirement that voters provide a verbal and/or written interpretation of the state constitution. In addition to legal actions taken to disfranchise Mississippi's black citizens, white registrars regularly found reasons not to allow blacks to register to vote. When such actions failed to dissuade black men and women from attempting to register, reprisals against them often came in the form of economic and physical intimidation, as well as outright violence.