Blacks voted in Revolutionary times

Black history month. . .

Blacks voted long before the 1965 Voting Rights Act (which Democrats fought). The infamous 1856 Dred Scott decision in which a Democratic-controlled US Supreme Court observed that blacks “had no rights which a white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Non-Democrat Justice Benjamin R. Curtis, one of only two on the Court who dissented in that opinion, provided a lengthy documentary history to show that many blacks in America had often exercised the rights of citizens – that many at the time of the American Revolution “possessed the franchise of [voters] on equal terms with other citizens.”

State constitutions protecting voting rights for blacks included those of Delaware (1776), Maryland (1776), New Hampshire (1784), and New York (1777). Pennsylvania also extended such rights in her 1776 constitution, as did Massachusetts in her 1780 constitution. 

As a result of these provisions, early American towns such as Baltimore had more blacks than whites voting in elections; and when the proposed US Constitution was placed before citizens in 1787 and 1788, it was ratified by both black and white voters in a number of States. (All references are to free blacks, not slaves.)

For citations and information about how Democrats fought against rights for blacks even into the 1960s, see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1072053/posts