Guest Post by Clayborn Benson III
African Americans have played a part in Wisconsin’s history since the very beginning of the state’s history, working as trappers, guides, and frontiersmen. They roamed the territory with Pere Marquette; they had strange names like Black Bart, James Pierson Beckwourth, Claude and Mary Ann Gagnier, Toby Dodge, and the Bonga Family (Pierre, Joas, Marie Jeanne, and George).[1] They roamed from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien. They harvested the lumber from Superior, WI and traded with the native Indians in Peshtigo County. The numbers of African American citizens were never significant enough to outpopulate anyone; however, they influenced almost every political decision made in the state. African Americans were encouraged and invited to relocate to places like Freedom, WI, (north of Appleton) named in honor of an African American, James Andrew Jackson, WI. They settled in all kinds of places you would never imagine, and they were a big support to the European citizens. They spoke many European languages and even influenced the architectural design of the round barns, although their population was still less than one percent.
In 1846, when
Wisconsin made the decision to become a state, the founders included in the
constitution that African American men should have the right to vote, as any
other citizen. Not only were there fierce debates in the state legislature over
African American suffrage in 1846, they were even referenced as the “N” word in
the state legislature, when their numbers in no way represented a serious
threat to the percentage of the state’s population.[2] “Free
and unequal” is a descriptive term to describe my view of how African Americans
have been treated, particularly in Wisconsin. There are three major things that
African Americans have had to fight for throughout our presence in Wisconsin,
1) education 2) fair and decent housing, and 3) the right to vote. For the
purposes of this paper, I will focus on suffrage or the right to vote.
According to Michael J. McManus, PhD, “Disfranchisement implied that blacks not only were undesirable members of their communities but were incapable of exercising the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. In addition, the attitudes that deprived blacks of the right to vote in the North mirrored those same principles that in the South reduced them to servitude.”[3]
We don’t have to go back very far to see the current and blatant voter suppression tactics used in Wisconsin. In April 2020, during the mayoral election in Milwaukee, only five voting places were made available for the 31st largest city in the United States.[4] On a cold, damp spring day, during the coronavirus pandemic, people stood in line for hours waiting for the opportunity to exercise their right to vote. In addition, African American men and women who have violated state laws, resulting in jail time, also lose their right to vote. This is just one more way that African Americans are disenfranchised.
In 1846 the founding
fathers put in Wisconsin’s constitution that all men should have the right to
vote. White citizens in the western part of the state, where slavery existed,
voted against African American men having the right to vote.
Statehood election took place in 1848, but African Americans were not permitted to vote. The state’s founders realized that giving the right to vote to African Americans was something they wanted to do, so they called for the first of two referendums asking for African Americans to have the right to vote—one in 1849 and another in 1857.
In 1854, Joshua Glover[5], a fugitive slave from St. Louis, was arrested and broken out of jail at Cathedral Square in Milwaukee. This was in direct conflict with the Fugitive Slave Law passed by U.S. Congress just four years earlier. Wisconsin was one of the only states in the Union to openly defy the Fugitive Slave Law. The thing that makes this unique and special is that the governor and abolitionists all believed that defying federal law was the right thing to do. Wisconsin’s Governor Alexander Williams Randall asked that the local militia stand ready to protect the state; because of their actions President Buchanan was threatening the state for violating the Constitution.[6] How did the more than 99.9 percent white citizens justify taking an abolitionist’s position of breaking a slave out of jail yet continue to disenfranchise African Americans by refusing to allow them the right to vote?
There are conflicts between the Irish community, lynchings, and conferences on the issue of voting
rights. The 1850s brought a great deal of attention to the question of whether
African Americans should have the right to vote. In 1857, the state decided to
bring the issue before the public again as a referendum item in a gubernatorial
election of William Randall. They won the right to vote but it was contested by
citizens in the Western part of the state in court because they saw the right
to vote as a path to citizenship, which they opposed. After the Civil War,
African Americans began asking when they would get the rights they were entitled
to. The issue of voting was not just about giving African Americans the right
to vote, but rather empowering them to become equal citizens. After Ezekiel
Gillespie, a well-known Milwaukee entrepreneur had a dispute in a barbershop
regarding African Americans’ right to vote, he enlisted the help of Sherman
Booth and Attorney Byron Paine to petition the court on the matter. The court
reviewed the issue and found that it was no more than a mathematical error; the
totaling of the votes showed that they had the right to vote dating back to the
first referendum ballot in 1849. For more than 100 years no one took the
liberty to explain why there were miscalculations of the vote dating back to
1849.
In 2020, Wisconsin, along with the nation is celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.[7] It’s clear that the right to vote brings about citizenship, equality and empowerment, while at the same time African Americans continue to be disenfranchised through voter suppression, photo ID requirements, closing polls in the African American community to control election outcomes and refusing to reinstate voting rights to individuals previously incarcerated.
[1] Barbara J. Shade, “Afro-Americans in
Early Wisconsin,” Transactions of the
Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters 69 (1971): 113-116.
[2] Michael J. McManus, Political
Abolitionism in Wisconsin, 1840-1861 (Kent,
OH: Kent State University Press, 1998), 19-21.
[3] McManus, Political Abolitionism in
Wisconsin, 21-23.
[4] Brennan Center for Justice, June 24, 2020 and David
Haynes, Want to Make Voting Easier in Wisconsin?
Here Are Nine Ways to Do It,” JSOnline, https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/solutions/2019/12/20/want-make-voting-easier-wisconsin-here-nine-ways-do-it/2700442001/
April 9, 2020.
[5] C. C. Olin, The John Olin Family History, 1678 to 1893 (Indianapolis: Baker-Randolph
Co., 1893).
[6] James Doolittle Papers; Message of
Governor Alexander Randall to the Citizens of Wisconsin, in the Milwaukee
Sentinel, January 16, 1858.
[7] Remarks by Dr. Turkiya Lowe, Chief
Historian and Deputy Federal Preservation Officer, National Park Service,
Wisconsin Historical Society Virtual Annual Conference 2020, https://wisconsinhistory.zoom.us/rec/play/HyXHrMNT84s9ol2KBvlnNHSLE5CC8M4FEC50iB3q9UveQLu7u_zNBQRjjfx9CWKJUvA-ApBLi7PvKgpK.a_u_1PIeai2Sfv5H.
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