Macon County in 1940

Living conditions for Macon County, Alabama’s Black population spurred the founding of the Tuskegee Civic Association in 1941 and were defined by inequity, exploitation, and segregation. In Macon County, like in other Alabama and Southern areas where segregation was the norm, Blacks were discriminated against in education, employment, property ownership, the legal system, and every other societal function and service.

In 1940, Macon County was home to 27,654 people - 22,708 black and 4,946 white. Although Macon County’s total population was over 80% Black, only 27 of 11,298 Black people of legal voting age were registered voters. 

The white establishment at the state and local level did everything in their power to restrict the voting power of Black people - fearing their majority in the population of Black Belt counties like Macon County, and fearing that if Blacks got political power, they would seek some kind of revenge on the white power structure which had oppressed them. Some of the tactics used to prevent Black voting in Macon County were written into the state Constitution.

Alabama’s State Constitution, adopted in 1901, made Jim Crow discrimination the law of the land. After it went into effect, people who wanted to vote must:

• Be male and 21 years old (until the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 allowed women to vote)
• Be employed for at least one year before trying to register
• Own property
• Pay a poll tax. All voters, ages 21-45, must pay $1.50 every year to continue voting. Unpaid taxes from earlier years were added to the total amount due. If you paid someone else’s poll tax, you were guilty of bribery and lost your right to vote. (In 1901, $1.50 was equivalent to about $45 today.)

In 1946, Alabama passed the “Boswell Amendment” which required prospective voters to be “of good character” and to be able to read, write, interpret, and explain any article of the United States Constitution. In 1949, the Boswell Amendment was declared to be unconstitutional by Federal Court. In response, the Alabama State Legislature passed a law which authorized the Alabama Supreme Court to prepare lists of questions that prospective voters would have to answer. 

Macon County had the worst barriers to voting in the entire state of Alabama, mostly because of the state-appointed Board of Registrars. The Tuskegee Civic Association documented their activities for the record to support their legal cases. Some of the actions they recorded are listed below:

• The board had racially discriminatory practices and tactics used to slow down Black applications and registration.
• They let whites apply before blacks, even if the Black registrants had been in line first.
• They required different standards of performance on state questionnaires or Boswell Amendment requirements. Whites could have help on these sections or skip them entirely. Blacks had to read and write longer passages without help and had to do it perfectly. 
• Blacks were required to have someone vouch for them when registering to vote. A Black person could only vouch for prospective voters a limited number of times. White vouchers had no limits. 
• Often the board would not take action on Black applications, or it would fail to inform Black registrants of the status of their application.
• Frequently, the board would not take Black applications on their regular registration days.
• The board would meet in secret locations at secret times to avoid Black registrants.
• Sometimes, board members would resign to make it impossible for the board to conduct business. This was a tactic they used when the TCA brought legal action against the board or when too many Black people managed to successfully register to vote. 

Between the years of 1945 and 1961, Macon County effectively had no functioning Board of Registrars for a total of nearly four and a half years. When the Board of Registrars was functioning, only one of the registrars who was appointed during that entire period would actually register Black voters in good faith.