One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

by Carol Anderson

Talmadge’s followers carried out a major purge of the voting rolls, especially in the rural counties. They also engaged in acts of intimidation such as cross burnings. And Talmadge gave his blessing to waves of anti-black violence. A World War II veteran, Maceo Snipes, was one of the first to get caught in the tide of state-sponsored lynching. Black veterans were particular targets throughout the country because their sense of rights and racial justice had grown especially acute during the battles of World War II. Snipes had already put his life on the line for democracy. In 1946, he was willing to do it again. When the 1946 primary rolled around—the first since the US Supreme Court’s Smith v. Allwright decision—Maceo Snipes was not about to sit out the election in Taylor County, Georgia, where whites had already posted a sign on black churches that read: “The first Negro to vote will never vote again.” Undeterred, in July 1946, Maceo Snipes cast his ballot, the only black person in the county to do so. A few days later, white men showed up at Snipes’s house and demanded that he step outside. He did and was shot.