Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890

Calls for a new Mississippi constitution in 1888 emerged from a combination of tensions: race, geography, and political allegiances on the state and national levels. These disputes prompted Pres. Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, to address electoral issues throughout the South. The resulting Federal Elections Bill, considered a “force bill” by Democrats, would allow federal oversight of congressional elections. Democrats nationally reacted vigorously, for it imperiled their notion of order in the southern states. White Mississippians feared that political and social order as they understood it was under attack.

Pressure to rewrite the Mississippi constitution intensified in 1890. For fifteen years following Reconstruction, the state had relied on an awkward truce among multiple political parties and between the races. Intimidation and threats of violence were ever-present, but white leaders in the state tolerated split-ticket voting in counties with large African American populations, even allowing some African Americans to hold lower-level political offices.

White citizens of the state also had formed an uneasy alliance between Black and white counties. Black counties had a larger African American population, but were run by white elites; white counties were heavily populated by poorer white farmers who held local political power. Challenging economic times shifted these old allegiances and created a new cooperation between African Americans and some white farmers. This new collaboration alarmed many elites, in some incidences producing violent responses. White Mississippians worried that this violence would “corrupt the morals” of a younger generation, or worse yet, that the federal government would interfere.

State leaders, including US senators Edward Walthall and J. Z. George, divided over whether calling a convention to write a new constitution might protect the state from outside interference. Endorsement from Gov. John Marshall Stone broke the stalemate in support of a new constitution. Numerous letters to newspaper editors about the convention clearly reveal that the public’s perception of its primary purpose was to disfranchise African Americans through legal means.

Senator George was the acknowledged leader of the convention. Nevertheless, the real power resided in the convention’s large franchise committee—composed of the most prominent and influential leaders in the state as well as the one African American delegate, Isaiah Montgomery. The committee members agreed that their charge was disfranchisement, and so they recommended a variety of methods to curtail African American voting.

Recognizing that the Fifteenth Amendment forbade prohibition of African American voting, the convention simply expanded the requirements to vote. Fearing they might offend white dirt farmers, convention delegates carefully selected from a number of options. Although they seriously toyed with women’s suffrage as a counter to African American male votes, the committee decided that the voters must be male, twenty-one, a resident of the state for two years and within a county for one. They then added an annual poll tax of two dollars, mandated an oath confirming the voter had not been guilty of certain felonies (which the committee deemed more likely to have been committed by African Americans), and even created an “electoral college” for gubernatorial elections.

The committee further required state-printed ballots. But voting with these ballots necessitated literacy, which in turn threatened the alliance with white illiterates. The committee therefore proposed an “understanding clause.” A prospective voter could be read a portion of the constitution; if he could explain that provision, he would be allowed to vote. This provision was so controversial it nearly undid the convention. Many Mississippians wrote lengthy letters to their newspapers, in which they pointed to the clause’s susceptibility for manipulation. The clause, however, remained in the constitution.

Other issues before the convention exposed the class divide within the state and emphasized the seriousness of the shift to a division based on race. Only after careful negotiation did the convention delegates reach a compromise between the Black and white counties so that disfranchisement would work, convention delegates proceeded with careful negotiations. Some items like the prohibition of convict leasing found wide support. Others exposed deep divisions. Proposals for education revealed that even some of the elites saw dangers in widening access to education. Leaders of the Bar got their appointed judiciary (temporarily), a decision that upset the white counties. The need for levee funds in the Black counties created an opportunity for negotiation over banks, railroads, and bankruptcy—issues important to the white counties. Gerrymandered reapportionment allowed a balance of power in the legislature, yet it did not always work as supposed. Realizing these sensitive compromises would not be popular among the general public—given the reaction to the understanding clause—the members of the convention voted to put the constitution into effect by proclamation (promulgation) rather than go through a process of ratification.

In the end, as a result of challenges from outside of Mississippi, state newspaper editors reversed their opposition to the constitution. The first of these outside challenges came during the debates on the national Elections Bill. Senators George and Walthall had to join forces to defend the new constitution from extensive assaults on the floor of the Senate. The Elections Bill, which would have undone much of the new Mississippi constitution, failed to pass. The second venue for challenge came through the courts where litigants contested provisions in the new constitution. Eventually the US Supreme Court decided the matter in Williams v. Mississippi (1898). Williams, an African American convicted of murder, argued that he had been injured by the section of the 1890 constitution, which ostensibly did not allow for a jury to include African Americans. Potential jurors came from the voting lists, and since the constitution made it difficult for African Americans to vote, then few if any were eligible for a jury pool. The Court decided that Williams had not proved his case that the Mississippi constitution harmed African Americans on its face. This decision permitted Mississippi and the other southern states that followed Mississippi’s example to control the voting rights of African Americans. Unlike some southern states that relied on additional provisos, such as a grandfather clause, the Mississippi constitution withstood assaults on its restrictive provisions until the Twenty-Fourth Amendment of 1964.