Item #66411 SPEECH OF HON. R. M. CUNNINGHAM (of Jefferson County), IN SUPPORT OF THE MAJORITY REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON SUFFRAGE AND ELECTIONS, IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF ALABAMA, July 27, 1901. [5000 copies printed by order of the convention.]. R. M. CUNNINGHAM.

SPEECH OF HON. R. M. CUNNINGHAM (of Jefferson County), IN SUPPORT OF THE MAJORITY REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON SUFFRAGE AND ELECTIONS, IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF ALABAMA, July 27, 1901. [5000 copies printed by order of the convention.].

Montgomery, AL: Brown Printing Co., Printers and Binders, 1901. First edition, State of Alabama Constitutional Convention, 1901, Document No. 8. 8vo. 30 pp. Cunningham (1855-1921), a physician serving Alabama’s prison system and coal mining companies, was elected to the 1901 constitutional convention and helped to design the measures that disenfranchised Black voters in the state. Through speeches and editorials, Cunningham went to great lengths to justify his position. A white supremacist, he believed that Blacks were an inferior race and that political equality would lead to partial social equality and interracial marriage” (Encyclopedia of Alabama online). The majority report from the Committee of Suffrage and Elections recommending a combination of methods to disenfranchise African Americans was endorsed here by Cunningham: “The sudden enfranchisement of a large mass of ignorant voters, just emerged from slavery, by the adoption of the fifteenth amendment has been recognized almost everywhere as the mistake of the nineteenth century ... while the State cannot discriminate against the voter on account of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude, it may discriminate against him on any other ground ... our purpose is to establish the supremacy of virtue and intelligence in this State and to eliminate from the electorate the ignorant and the vicious." To disenfranchise African Americans, the adopted 1901 constitution called for a literacy test and a poll tax and included a grandfather clause for those who served in the military and their descendants. Not in Work. OCLC locates seven copies of this pamphlet (New York Public, New York State Library, Alabama Archives & History, Auburn, Yale, Duke, Virginia-Law). Very good. Original printed gray wrappers, stapled. Item #66411

Price: $275.00

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