[South Carolina]:

$2,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, RATIFIED IN CONVENTION, DECEMBER 4, 1895. First printing of the only post-Reconstruction constitution of the state of South Carolina, which effectively dismantled all the civil rights gains found in the 1868 South Carolina state constitution and introduced the Jim Crow laws that governed the state until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.South Carolina's Reconstruction constitution of 1868, "which had been the most democratic constitution ever in South Carolina,...[was] drawn up at a constitutional convention which consisted of seventy-six African Americans and forty-eight Whites [and mandated] the creation and maintenance of a free public school system in which racial discrimination was not permitted...abolished property requirements for holding office, [and] enlarged the electorate by providing for universal male suffrage" (Moore).The present 1895 South Carolina constitution, however, disenfranchised African-American residents by restricting the vote to people who could "read and write any Section of the constitution...or [who could] show that he owns, and has paid all taxes collectible on property in this State assessed at three hundred dollars ($300) or more [and] shall require of every elector...before allowing him to vote, proof of the payment of all taxes, including poll tax, assessed against him...." The constitution goes on to deny interracial marriage: "The marriage of a white person with a Neg

• Printing: first

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