The Voter Purge of 1956

Imagine getting a notice from the Voter’s Registration Office that there is something wrong with your voting registration and you need to come in to the office at the courthouse within ten days and rectify it. You then get to the courthouse and find a line of people out the door and down the sidewalk. The office is on the second floor. All are people who got the same notice. After you get to the office, you are told you need two other registered voters to vouch for you. They better not have come in with anyone else and they better not have been challenged themselves. If you do jump through those hoops, even if you had already been registered before, you had to take a test on the U.S. Constitution in order to re-register. The person “grading” the test was the person who kicked you off the rolls to begin with. This is exactly what happened to Ouachita Parish African American voters in the 50’s. Welcome to the Voter Purge of 1956, where it was estimated between 4,000 – 6,000 names were taken off the voter rolls. I have over simplified things a bit but that was the meat of the matter. A book could easily be written about it. What brought it to mind was finding a transcript of sworn testimony before the Commission of Civil Rights from James Sharp, Jr., Rev. Phillip R. Brown III, Dr. John I. Reddix, president of the local N.A.A.C.P. at the time and M.H. Carroll, principal of Carroll High School. What they testified, was jaw dropping.

You can read it here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/IbcBAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Ouachita+Parish%22&pg=PA746&printsec=frontcover .