1920 election exhibited at Delta Cultural Center
HELENA-WEST HELENA — History celebrates the voting that took place 100 years ago when women across America could take part in general elections for the first time, thanks to passage of the 19th Amendment.
But Arkansas in 1920 saw another significant political turn of events — a doleful one. Propelled by the Jim Crow ethos, white leaders effectively eliminated the state’s Black citizens from any remaining role of consequence in public life. The racial equation stayed that way until federal civil rights laws intervened nearly a half-century later.
Both these stories, with emphasis on the further exclusion of Black citizens from politics are told in “1920: An Exceptional Election Year.” The exhibit’s stay at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena-West Helena has been extended until Feb. 27.
“Arkansans faced a changing world at the ballot box that fall,” explains an introductory panel. “Women were welcome for the first time to cast their votes, and for the first time, an African American was among the candidates for governor.”
He was Josiah Blount, from Forrest City. He had no actual chance of winning, given the ongoing denial of political rights to
Black people after the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction in 1877. That widening discrimination is traced in panels of words and images.
Visitors may be surprised to learn that the Arkansas General Assembly in 1893 still included 11 Black members. That year’s Jim Crow election law driven by Democrats reduced the number of Black legislators in 1895 to only four. By 1897, there were none, and that remained the case until 1973.
The state’s Republican party became the refuge for Black Arkansans. But, as the exhibit explains, many white Republicans by 1920 viewed the presence of Black members in their midst as an impediment to electoral success.
Known as Lily Whites in newspaper headlines, the segregationists maneuvered to exclude Black people from roles of significance. In response came Blount’s candidacy in a Black & Tans coalition. It was “a concerted demonstration by Black Republicans, concentrated in Little Rock and the Delta region, against an alarming surge of racial injustice within their political party.”
Blount received only 8% of the vote. A century later, Arkansas has yet to elect a governor of color. Nor has a woman been elected to the state’s highest executive office. That could change in 2022, given that prospective candidates include two Republican women, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Leslie Rutledge.