A Liberal
Dose
November 25,
2021
Troy D.
Smith
“History of
Voting, Part 4: Native Americans”
As our look at the history of voting has been chronological,
the next topic after last week’s discussion at the beginning of the women’s
suffrage movement would be what are called “the Reconstruction Amendments.”
That refers to amendments 13, 14, and 15, all passed in the first few years
after the end of the Civil War. #13 ended slavery or any other form of
involuntary servitude, except in prison. #14 specified that anyone born within
the geographic boundaries of the U.S. was a citizen, with all the rights of any
other citizen. That amendment was meant to specify that the newly-freed slaves
could be citizens and vote. Finally, #15 guaranteed that no citizen could be
denied their voting rights “because of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.”
Since this is Thanksgiving week, I thought it would be
appropriate to take a look at what this meant for Native Americans, and save
our discussion of African Americans until next week.
What did these amendments mean to Native people? Absolutely
nothing. They were not considered citizens, although born in the country. They
could be denied the vote because of their race or color. They were literally
the only people the 14th amendment did not apply to. Why? Because
they were considered members of their tribe, which was separate from the United
States even though it was physically within the United States. The government
considered tribes “dependent nations” and “wards of the state.”
Think about that for a minute. Indigenous people have been
called “American Indians” and “Native Americans”… but they were not considered
Americans. This started to change, oddly enough, as a result of World War I.
A large number of Native Americans -including quite a few
women -volunteered to serve in the U.S. military during the war. Unlike black
troops of the time, or Japanese-American troops in WWII, they were not put into
segregated units; they were scattered among the regular units, with the white
soldiers. And there were a large number of them. In fact, in every American
military conflict since WWI, Native Americans have had the highest proportional
enlistment rates. The first “code talkers” were used in WWI, mostly Choctaws,
while the more famous Navajo ones served in WWII. It was a way to celebrate
their own military/warrior culture, and was also a way to show they were every
bit as American as anybody else.
Odds are, just about every company had a few “Indians.”
Their white comrades got to see that they had not become extinct, that they
were patriotic, and that they were brave. When the war was over, as people
learned that the Native people they had fought beside could not vote, there was
an outcry. In 1919 citizenship and the vote were given to all Native war
veterans. It was a start, but it was not enough. Finally, in 1924, Congress
conferred full citizenship on Native American people. This happened 148 years
after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which had called them “merciless
savages.”
Just because a Native person was legally allowed to vote,
though, did not mean he or she would be physically allowed to vote. In states
that had large indigenous populations -in the West and in Alaska -the Native
vote was suppressed for decades, in much the same way the black vote was
suppressed in the South: through violence, intimidation, coercion, deception,
and general chicanery.
You’ve no doubt heard of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and
know that it was passed to protect the voting rights of African Americans in
the South. What you might not know is that it was also meant to protect the
voting rights of Native Americans in the West. Legislatures in some western
states still pass laws specifically designed to make it harder for Natives to
vote.
This Thanksgiving, think about how little honor and
appreciation have been shown to the first Americans.
--Troy D. Smith,
a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech.
His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment