- [Announcer] The Citizenship Project is brought to you in part by a grant from the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area.

And by Dell technologies.

We help you build your digital future and transform how you work, live, and play.

- Voting above all is power.

- America has a long history of trying to obstruct the vote.

And I don't think it serves the democracy well.

- This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless.

It gives people, people as individuals control over their own destinies.

- [Narrator] Since the dawn of statehood the right to vote in Tennessee has been uneven, inconsistent, and contested.

Join us as we explore our past struggles with voting legislation and suppression, to gain perspective on the laws we have today.

(upbeat music) - Brownsville began its life or Haywood County did, as a slave labor cotton plantation county.

And the dominant demographic feature of that county in 1940 was an African American population majority of three or four to one.

The African-Americans on the farms were called sharecroppers not slaves, but they lived in the same shacks on the same plantation.

And economically they were little better off.

They could not vote.

They had been disenfranchised since the late 19th century and they were kept at the bottom of the pile to afford the white people in that county a vast pool of cheap labor.

So that was the society into which Elbert Williams had been born in 1908, and in which he and his wife Annie worked in 1940.

- [Narrator] Elbert Williams was a member of Haywood County's fledgling branch of the NAACP.

The first of its kind in a rural Tennessee County.

In the spring of 1940, five NAACP members attempted to register to vote but were turned away.

Word spread quickly through the small town leading to death threats against the would be voters.

- [Jim] They persisted, they were determined.

The threats didn't work.

They couldn't be dissuaded from registering to vote.

So in mid June a plan was devised, a conspiracy hatched to kidnap and run out of town the two leaders of the would be voter registrants.

- [Narrator] The plan appeared successful with the two NAACP leaders out of town never to return, most believed the incident was over.

- They thought they had won, and that without the leadership of the president Buster Walker, and the voter registrant leader Elijah Davis that the branch would just fold but they had not counted on Elbert Williams.

- [Narrator] Williams had what he thought was a confidential meeting with Elijah Davis's brother Thomas, to plan another attempt to register voters.

However the conversation was overheard and reported to the police.

- [Jim] That night the police came for Thomas Davis, and then they came for Elbert Williams.

They kidnapped those men.

They put them in jail.

They questioned them about the NAACP.

The jailer let Thomas Davis go.

Davis said, when I left that jail there was a large group of white men outside, and it scared me to death but they did not seem interested in me.

He left town that night never went back.

Elbert Williams was so lucky.

Nobody saw him for three days until his body was hauled out of the Hatchie River.

And I am convinced that his murder was a terrorist killing.

That was meant to send a message that was unforgettable to every black person in Haywood County.

If you try to vote, this will happen to you.

And the murder was successful.

The murders were not prosecuted and they bought Haywood County another 20 years of white supremacist rule.

- [Narrator] By contrast some 70 years before Williams murder, and just after the civil war.

White Confederates would be banned from voting, while Black Freedmen would be welcomed to the polls by an outspoken East Tennessee preacher turned governor William Gannaway Brownlow, also known as the Fighting Parson.

Nashville was the first state Capitol reclaimed by U.S. forces during the war resulting in the installation of a pro union government.

But Brownlow's heavy handed tactics enforcing passage of the 14th amendment took a toll on his political power.

Many of his fellow radical Republicans were beginning to align themselves with Confederate sympathizers.

Brownlow needed to find a new voting base to retain office.

So he made one.

- And when the general assembly convenes in the spring of 1867, he has ready for them what was called the Negro Voting Bill.

And some of the delegates, some of the state reps at this meeting of the general assembly really did not think this was a good idea.

There was some debate, but it did pass.

It provided unequivocal suffrage for all African American men in Tennessee.

Before the ratification of the 15th amendment to the United States constitution that gave all African-American men in the United States the right to vote.

- [Narrator] Granting Freedmen the vote infuriated most Tennesseeans, including many of the so-called radical Republicans.

But the ballots of 40,000 pro union Freedmen would ensure Brownlow's reelection and continued radical rule, albeit briefly.

For former Confederate soldiers who were banned from voting.

This was the last straw.

The ranks of the Ku Klux Klan, and other terrorist groups exploded.

Governor Brownlow responded with a state militia but he knew his days in Nashville were numbered.

- [Carole] Brownlow realized the political cost of that.

He recognized that he was losing power.

And so he persuaded the general assembly to appoint him to the United States Senate when one of our U.S.

Senators resigned and our Lieutenant governor Dewitt Senter another radical became governor.

- [Narrator] With the Fighting Parson out of the picture.

His successor as governor Dewitt Senter restored voting rights to the ex-Confederates putting conservative Democrats back in power, and signaling the beginning of the end of reconstruction in Tennessee.

- [Carole] So among the many early things that they did when they got back into power was to call a constitutional convention and rewrite the state constitution.

- [Narrator] Former Confederate hardliners were eager to undo the progress black Tennesseeans had made under Brownlow's rule, including the repeal of the Freedmen's right to vote.

But the threat of federal intervention was too great a risk.

Foreshadowing future voter suppression legislation however, the convention did authorize a poll tax for later use.

In spite of tightening voter restrictions.

And in many cases personal risk, Freedmen would elect more than a dozen black Tennesseeans to the state legislature over the next 20 years.

They would spend much of their time in a vain attempt to stem the rising tide of Jim Crow legislation and violence against black voters.

In 1889 when no African-Americans were elected to the general assembly, a series of bills aimed at suppressing black voters were enacted into Tennessee law.

- [Carole] And so in 1889 and 90, the Tennessee general assembly signed four election bills related to limiting the voting or making it harder to vote particularly poor people, particularly illiterate people.

- [Narrator] The first such bill which became the Myers Law.

Required voters in districts or towns that had cast more than 500 votes in 1888 to re-register at least 20 days before every election.

The Lea Law was passed to prevent federal supervision of state elections through the creation of separate boxes for federal and state ballots.

The Dortch Law banned voters from receiving help to fill out their ballot unless they had voted in 1857, 10 years before black men could vote.

This disenfranchised illiterate African-Americans and eventually illiterate whites as well.

By far the most oppressive piece of voter suppression legislation, was the implementation of a poll tax in 1890.

When the poorest wage earners made less than 25 cents a day.

- You have to pay a fee to be allowed to vote.

$2 was a tremendous amount to pay.

- [Narrator] These new laws along with literacy tests and threats of violence kept many black Tennesseans away from the polls for decades.

But not all, especially in cities throughout the state.

- The differences between urban and rural Tennessee are similar to differences between urban and rural areas across the south.

Even in the darkest days of disenfranchisement a small but significant number of African-Americans were able to vote because one, city dwelling African-Americans typically didn't make up as large a percentage of the population as in rural areas.

So they didn't pose as much of a threat.

There also was an independent class that wasn't as tied to white employers.

So they cannot face political repercussions for voting.

And in rural areas they were more tied like sharecroppers to white employers.

And there also was a safety in numbers, and there were black institutions.

There were churches that they could use as mobilization centers for voting.

- [Narrator] Another important difference in urban areas was the creation of political machines, which allowed men of power and influence to control elections.

And no one in Tennessee wielded more power than Boss Crump of Memphis.

- EH Crump was a major political figure in the first half of the 20th century.

Both in the state of Tennessee, especially in Shelby County in Memphis.

And in 1909 he's elected Mayor of the city of Memphis.

And enacts a lot of very important civic reforms from 1910 to early 1916.

And one of the most important is his involvement in bringing African-Americans into the political process.

Even after the poll tax.

The poll tax could be overcome either through an individual paying the tax himself, or an organization paying that tax for him because the power structure wanted your vote.

- [Narrator] During the great depression Boss Crump's political power reached across the state.

Paul Cantrell, a wealthy banker in McMinn County started his own political machine, when Crump made him Sheriff.

- [Chris] He becomes the chairman of the McMinn County Court, as well as the head of the Democratic Party in the County and so he's very firmly in control of the County.

- [Narrator] Unlike Boss Crump, Paul Cantrell's operation relied less on bribery and more on violence.

- You have thousands of people from McMinn County describing being forced out of polling places at gunpoint, being assaulted and attacked by deputies, ballot boxes being stuffed and swapped really, incredible can't believe it happened in America type of allegations.

- [Narrator] As Americans headed overseas during World War II Paul Cantrell headed to Nashville as a state Senator.

But it was business as usual back in the County seat of Athens, where Cantrell's chief deputy Pat Mansfield became Sheriff.

As the war ended, young veterans returned from combat only to face the corruption of Cantrell's deputies from the moment they set foot in McMinn County.

- [Chris] Deputies would be greeting every bus coming into town and just arresting GIs taking their mustering out pay.

They were arrested without cause, and harassed by corrupt deputies and police officers.

- [Narrator] In response to the continuing abuse from Cantrell's organization, the veterans developed a peaceful legal plan to deal with it.

- [Chris] Violence was the farthest thing from the minds of most of these young men.

What they got together and said was, we're gonna form our own party.

And they nominated a slate of veterans consisting of three Democrats and two Republicans.

And so they're trying to have that the most broadly appealing party focused around the issue of restoring fair elections to the County, restorating free and honest government.

- [Narrator] On the first day of August 1946, GI party members awoke to the harsh realization that Senator Cantrell had no intention of handing over control of Athens.

Sheriff Mansfield had deputized 200 armed men to police the polls.

- [Chris] And so from the very beginning of the day GI poll Watchers, they're arrested, assaulted, beaten up, hospitalized in one case.

- [Narrator] The violence intensified as an elderly African-American who had voted regularly for years attempted to cast his ballot.

- [Chris] And deputy Windy Wise confronted him, assaulted him with brass knuckles, threw him out of the polling place.

Tom Gillespie gets up and walks back into the polling place.

And then Wendy Wise pulls out his gun and shoots him.

And so Tom Gillespie ends up in hospital, the crowd outside which has been tense, waiting all day for the fireworks to start they're enraged to watch this beloved neighbor of theirs fighting for his life for simply trying to vote in an election.

- [Narrator] With the election over and ballot boxes guarded by Cantrell's deputies in the jail.

The veterans peaceful plan had failed.

after a meeting to weigh their options.

A number of GIs raided the National Guard Armory in preparation for an assault on the jail.

- [Chris] So once the sun sets about nine o'clock they demand the ballot boxes and the sheriff and his men refuse to turn over the ballot boxes, and then shots are fired and will be fired for the next six hours in a County seat.

In 1946, there was a firefight that goes all night and ends in a very dramatic bombing of the jail.

- [Narrator] While there were no fatalities in what came to be known as the Battle of Athens the bomb blast sounded the death knell for Paul Cantrell's political machine.

And victory for the GI party candidates.

Six years later Boss Crump's political machine would begin to die with him in 1954, but leading African-Americans in the bluff city had been working for decades to free themselves from Crump's oppression.

- [Wayne] The process that they went through organizing independently of Crump, not only paid dividends politically, but it also laid the foundation for the civil rights movement in Memphis.

Not only voting rights, but expanding ending segregation, limiting discrimination, and all of that.

And it really goes back to African-Americans coming out from under the Crump organization, organizing on their own, building their own political constituency, getting African-Americans elected to office, and then moving in expanding civil rights for everyone.

- [Narrator] For rural black Tennesseans civil rights were still just a dream in the fifties and early sixties.

Even with the repeal of Tennessee's oppressive poll tax in 1953 African-American voting efforts continued to be an uphill battle across much of the state.

But like the veterans in Athens, a brave group of African-Americans in West Tennessee would no longer accept the status quo.

In 1959 nearly 70% of the population in Fayette and Haywood counties were African-American.

Virtually none of them were registered to vote which meant they couldn't serve on a jury.

When a highly respected member of the black community was put on trial in front of 11 white jurors, local businessman John McFerren helped start a voter registration campaign.

- My name is Daphene McFerren.

I am the Executive Director of The Hooks Institute and also the daughter of two of the civil rights activists of Fayette County, John and Viola McFerren.

So registration activities began in earnest in 1959.

There are numerous photographs of African-Americans standing back to back circling the courthouse, waiting to register to vote.

They were harassed by people who worked in the courthouse.

They would spit on them, throw hot pepper on them, throw hot coffee from the windows, any effort to discourage voter registration.

- John McFarren managed to get people to register to vote.

But those individuals who attempted to vote were evicted from the lands.

You basically had sharecroppers and the land owners once they understood who was attempting to vote threw the people off the land.

- [Daphene] And so two black farmers They both own their land.

They allowed these evicted black farmers to set up tents on their farms.

And we have to recognize that they had no running water, no toilet facilities.

They were in army surplus tents.

It was a horrific image for the nation as a whole and the international community to observe that people who simply wanted to register and vote lost their homes because of it.

- [Linda] This is in the dead of winter.

It was a very very very unpleasant situation not only living in the tents but also having people primarily from the Ku Klux Klan shoot into the tents.

- [Narrator] The McFerrens and others made national pleas for assistance that were answered with a lifeline of food and supplies for the beleaguered sharecroppers.

- [Daphene] They literally thought and my father felt that the families would starve to death that winter.

And he did feel responsible.

I honestly, personally don't think that he foresaw that they would be blacklisted by white merchants that they couldn't get basic provisions in Fayette County.

People were living in tent city from 1960 through mid 1963.

- [Linda] So it was, it was a very drastic situation but to their credit, those who left the land set up the tent city they withstood their ground.

They were the first to use the 1957 Civil Rights Act filed suit, and ultimately they won the case.

- [Narrator] That 1962 decision was a hard fought victory for the evicted sharecroppers of West Tennessee.

But corruption would continue to plague many African-American voters for another three years.

When all people of color would celebrate nationwide protection with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

- I think many people thought that as a result of the efforts in the 1960s, that we had settled some of these issues about who is going to participate.

And that access to the electoral process would be something available to all.

And I have to say personally I am very concerned about where the nation is going.

We have some challenges here in Tennessee.

So Tennessee is one of six states in the U.S. that requires a government issued ID to vote.

We hear all the time in this country incorrectly that we have an issue with voter fraud.

We do not have an issue with voting fraud.

The courts even in this November 2020 election have uniformly held, judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats that there was no voter fraud of any impact that would have changed the outcome of the election.

This was one of the most secure elections in U.S. history.

There is no evidence that government issues ID reduces fraud or eliminates fraud to the extent that it impacts elections.

In fact it has the opposite effect.

It keeps people from voting.

Also one in five black adults in Tennessee cannot vote because of past felony conviction.

So therefore they don't have representation.

Why are we 49th in the country in voter turnout?

Why aren't more people registered?

Because the goal should be that everybody in this state bring their best to the table to uplift every citizen of the state of Tennessee regardless of race, sex, gender, et cetera.

That should be the goal.

So the Fayette County Movement is not just for history purposes but remains relevant today.

Because the relevant question is who's going to be able to participate in the electoral process to shape the nation and its resources.

That is a question that we are going to have to grapple with.

And I hope we will come out on the right side of history.

- [Jim] This was a white man's country that didn't change much until John Lewis and those brave people were beaten to pulps on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

We're still in much the same place now that we were then.

There are a lot of things going on in our nation right now that led up to Elbert Williams murder in 1940.

We've never fully embraced our founding principle that all men are created equal.

And until we as Americans embrace that principle and use our diversity as strength rather than hatred we're going to suffer for it and remain a divided nation.

A house divided can stand for a while, but not long.

- [Announcer] The Citizenship Project is brought to you in part by a grant from the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area.

And by Dell technologies, we help you build your digital future and transform how you work, live, and play.