Alabama’s State Constitution currently allows for segregated schools, a poll tax, and forced labor of prison inmates in mines and work camps. Those are just few examples of racist language State lawmakers appear ready to strip from the document that dates back to 1901. The Committee on the Recompilation of the Constitution decided this to move forward on recommendations to strip those provisions. The panel is expected to take a final vote in the coming weeks, putting the proposal before lawmakers in early 2022. If approved, it would go before state voters in November 2022.
“Our state constitution is reflective of who we are,” State House member Merika Coleman, who chairs the committee and sponsored the legislation setting up the process told the AP. “Those racist provisions in that constitution, and those outdated provisions, we hope that’s not who we are. We definitely know we are not a 1901 Alabama and we need to reflect that in the document."
The framers of the 1901 constitution were clear that their goal was to maintain a government controlled by whites. “The new constitution eliminates the ignorant negro vote, and places the control of our government where God Almighty intended it should be -– with the Anglo-Saxon race,” John Knox, president of the constitutional convention, said in a speech urging voters to ratify the document. In the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that said racially segregated schools were unconstitutional, Alabama adopted a Constitutional Amendment 111 allowing parents to opt for students to “attend schools provided for their own race" It also allowed for elected officials to intervene in schools for the “preservation of peace and order." Peace and order was a phrase used as a justification for fighting integration efforts. Alabama continued to fight school integration for more than a decade after the 1954 Brown v Board decision.
