Part 5 Chapter 30 Summary

Caro focuses narrowly on the situation in Bullock County, AL, to show how blacks were prevented from registering to vote in the 1950s by using the voucher system. Only five of the county's 11,000 blacks were registered when, on January 18, 1954, a half dozen more showed up at the county courthouse to apply. They were turned away. They knew well the tactics of violence and economic intimidation that could be used if they persisted, but persist they did. When turned away again, they hired one of a handful of black lawyers in Alabama, to "go to law" for them, but were informed that there was no law that could help them. Surprisingly, however, the District Court judge ruled that no board of registrars could "try to devise any scheme or artifice" to discriminate against black voters. This caused Bullock County board members resign...