My cousin Willy Sims in 1889 on Democratic suppression of Black votes in Chatham Virginia. ATTENTION GA AND TEXAS! YOU MAY HAVE MISSED A TRICK.

 

He told a horrific story of the election in Chatham. In the voting room he witnessed the systematic suppression of votes by negroes. Miller Ragsdale, a notorious card sharp, illegally opened the secret ballots: “ Runners were posted outside to warn colored men that their ballots would be known and their employment taken away if they voted the Republican ticket.” “No Republican voter was allowed to vote who had been absent thirty days in the last twelve months, although their homes and families were there . . . Colored voters who had always lived and voted there were told that they had been transferred to precincts twenty-five or thirty miles distant, although they protested that they had never heard of the precinct and could not get there. Many were told that their names were not registered, although they had heretofore always voted there. The recently registered colored voters were all told that they did not look like they were of age, and on their offers to prove their age they were told they would not believe a negro on oath.” Such were “only a few of the many outrages perpetrated,” Sims said. He concluded: “I have heard of and seen election frauds before, but this far surpassed all my ideas on that subject. In fact, it was no election at all. It was a grand farce under the form of law.”