Lawrence’s depiction of orderly voting in the North contrasts starkly with the systematic disenfranchisement of black voters in the South during the Migration years. Between the 1880s and 1910s, southern states enacted a range of laws that essentially annulled African Americans’ right to vote, which had been guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870. The adoption of a “grandfather clause,” for example, allowed state officials to deny suffrage to anyone whose grandparents had not registered to vote before the end of the Civil War: virtually all black citizens. Literacy tests required would-be voters to read and interpret passages from official documents, such as a state constitution, to the satisfaction of white officials, which was nearly impossible. Poll taxes and property requirements also kept poor blacks out of voting booths. Additionally, black citizens who wished to act on their right to vote were often threatened with violent reprisal.

The restrictions on voting were so effective that in 1940 only three percent of black southerners were registered. For many migrants, the North provided their first taste of political empowerment. Areas with dense African-American populations, like New York’s Harlem and Chicago’s South Side, formed congressional districts with black majorities, launching national careers for black politicians like Adam Clayton Powell Jr.Pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, activist, and politician Read more and Oscar DePriest.