On this day in 1870 Virginia was re -admitted to the Union – Mississippi today

January 26, 1870

Virginia was re-adopted to the Union after the state adopted a new constitution that allows black men to vote and ratify the 14^th and 15^th Changes. The Readmissions came five years after the black men first insisted on voting.

A month after the end of the Civil War, hundreds of black men appeared in the Norfolk electoral sections to vote. Most were rejected, but federal constituencies in one section allowed them to vote.

“Some historians believe this is the first case of a black vote in the South,” The Washington Post reports. “Even in the north, most places did not allow blacks to vote.”

Black men appeared in crowds to participate in the Constitutional Convention. One of them, John Brown, who was enslaved and saw his wife and daughter sold, sent a reply to the newsletter with a reminder “Love his neighbor as himself”. He won, beating two white candidates.

Brown has joined the 104 delegates, almost a quarter of which are black men, in the preparation of the new constitution. This cleared the way not only for the black voices, but also for the senators and representatives of Virginia to take their seats in the congress.

But the hope of continuing progress began to fade by the end of the year, when the legislature began to create its first laws as Jim Crowe, starting with separate schools for black and white students. Other laws of Jim Crowe were followed in Virginia and other states to impose racism in almost every aspect of life, including individual toilets, separate drinking fountains, separate restaurants, separate seating areas, separate waiting rooms, separate places in the hospital and When death comes, individual cemeteries.

Following the example of Mississippi, Virginia adopted a new constitution in 1902, which helped to deprive themselves of the voting rights of 90% of the black residents of Virginia who voted. The United States continued to adopt Jim Crowe’s statute until 1964, when the Civil Rights Act became the law of the country.