A Brief History
On March 8, 1957, both houses of Georgia’s state legislature passed and Governor Marvin Griffin approved a shameful resolution known as the Georgia Memorial to Congress.
Digging Deeper
As part of the ongoing effort by Georgia lawmakers and politicians to fight the rising tide of the Civil Rights Movement, this resolution asked the US Congress to repeal the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, all part of an effort in the “continuing battle for segregation.”
The gist of the 14th Amendment (1868) is that all citizens enjoy equal protection under the law, including equality in education. It also has portions concerning the rights of all citizens to due process, overruled Dred Scott in that African Americans descended from slaves can be citizens (the Dred Scott case ruled descendants of slaves could not be citizens). This Amendment meant any person born in the USA would be a citizen, regardless of national or racial heritage.
The 15th Amendment (1870) prevents states from denying a citizen the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Obviously, these 2 Amendments combined to make former slaves of African heritage citizens that have a right to vote that cannot be denied.
The rationale behind the Georgia Memorial to Congress amounts to a whining complaint about Northern representatives and senators being hostile to those from the Southern (previously Confederate) states and that the Congress that ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments did therefore not have the authority to do so, basically being an illegitimate Congress because of defacto exclusion of Southern input.
Apparently, this Memorial to Congress did not have the desired effect, and not only were the 14th and 15th Amendments not repealed, the US marched inexorably toward achieving major improvement in the Civil Rights situation of African Americans.
Today it may seem bizarre and unthinkable that a state would actually attempt to invalidate the citizenship and voting rights of people based on race. Only 60 years ago this was the situation in the United States, and many people are alive today that lived through this (including the author). Question for students (and subscribers): If you have any opinions about this action or what has transpired since, please share your thoughts with your fellow readers in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Browne-Marshall, Gloria J. and Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian. The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017.
