Register of Colored Voters at Purcellville Precinct, Jefferson District, Loudoun County, Virginia 1888-1901

Access and use

Location of collection:
Thomas Balch Library
Thomas Balch Library
208 West Market Street
Leesburg, Virginia 20176
Contact for questions and access:
POC: Alexandra S. Gressitt
Phone: (703) 737-7195
Fax: (703) 737-7195
Restrictions:

Collection open for research.

Terms of access:

No physical characteristics affect use of this material.

Preferred citation:

Register of Colored Voters at Purcellville Precinct, Jefferson District, Loudoun County, Virginia, 1888-1901 (OM 006), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

Summary

Creator:
Nancy Fixx, Leesburg, VA
Abstract:
The List of Colored Voters Registered at Purcellville Precinct in Jefferson District, Loudoun County, Virginia contains the names of registered local African American voters between 1888 and 1901. The records provide the name, age, length of residence in county and state, occupation, town of residence, and whether or not the individual had been transferred from or to another voting district.
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

Register of Colored Voters at Purcellville Precinct, Jefferson District, Loudoun County, Virginia, 1888-1901 (OM 006), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

Background

Scope and content:

The List of Colored Voters Registered at Purcellville Precinct in Jefferson District, Loudoun County, Virginia contains the names of registered local African American voters between 1888 and 1901. The records provide the name, age, length of residence in county and state, occupation, town of residence, and whether or not the individual had been transferred from or to another voting district.

Biographical / historical:

In 1867, African American males voted for the first time in Virginia when military governor John Schofield (1831-1906) ordered a referendum over the possibility of a new state constitution. The 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from denying men suffrage on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, garnered little public support from Virginia's white voters. An 1870 act of the Virginia Assembly provided for a "general registration of all male citizens of twenty-one years," but noted that the "list of voters, white and colored, shall be kept in separate books." Further state legislation, such as the 1884 Anderson-McCormick Act, authorized the Democratic majority in the General Assembly to appoint local voting registrars and appoint all members of electoral boards. By the 1890s, voting corruption such as stuffing ballot boxes and bribery disenfranchised thousands of black voters and white Republicans throughout Virginia, despite reform measures such as the Walton Act of 1894. It was not until the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 that African Americans would vote in large numbers in Virginia.

Acquisition information:
Nancy Fixx, Leesburg, VA
Processing information:

Emily Hershman, 20 May 2011

Arrangement:

Folder

Accruals:

2011.0185

Physical / technical requirements:

None