How did race shape Jacksonian Democracy?/ Race and Jacksonian Democracy

Black Voting Rights

At the time of the Revolution, only two states explicitly limited black voting rights. By 1839, almost all states did. (The four exceptions were all in New England, where the Democratic Party was weakest.)

1830s Race Riots

Social tensions promoted Jackson's rise which worsened race relations, and racial and ethnic resentment contributed to riots in American cities such as Philadelphia where whites attacked black churches and homes, and St. Louis where Elijah Lovejoy, an editor, was murdered as he defended his printing press.

Jim Crow and Black face

The white actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice appeared on stage in blackface, singing and dancing as a clownish slave. Many other white entertainers copied him. Borrowing from the work of real black performers but pandering to white audiences' prejudices, they turned cruel stereotypes into one of antebellum America's favorite forms of entertainment.

James Forten

a free-born sailmaker who had served in the American Revolution, had become a wealthy merchant and landowner. He used his wealth and influence to promote the abolition of slavery, and after the 1838 constitution, he undertook a lawsuit to protect his right to vote. But he lost, and his voting rights were terminated.

Female Anti-Slavery Society

included women whose husbands sold coal, mended clothes, and baked bread, as well as women from wealthy families. They organized boycotts of consumer products like sugar that came from slave labor, and they sold their own handmade goods at anti slavery fundraising fairs. For many of them, the antislavery movement was a way to participate in "respectable" middle-class culture, a way for both men and women to have a say in American life.