Leaders spoke candidly of their motivations. Jackson Giles, president at the Alabama Convention, asked, “[W]hat is it that we want to do?” He answered his own question: “[E]stablish white supremacy in this state.” It worked. Black voter registration dropped throughout the South by 90 to 100 percent, virtually eliminating their voices until the 1960s. Southern states, nevertheless, still demanded congressional representation calculated by including the full number of disenfranchised blacks in the population, and received it—a dramatic increase over the mere three-fifths negotiated by their
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