Administrative Information

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Collection open for research.

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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.

Acquisition Information

Nancy Fixx, Leesburg, VA

Alternative Form Available

None

Accruals

2011.0185

Processing Information

Emily Hershman, 20 May 2011

Historical Information

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.

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.

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