The Constitution of the State of Rhode Island is a document describing the structure and function of the government of the U.S. State of Rhode Island.
The Constitution of the State of Rhode Island is a document describing the structure and function of the government of the U.S. State of Rhode Island.
Prior to 1842, Rhode Island was still governed by the 1663 Royal Charter. At nearly two centuries old, the document essentially restricted voting rights to a very small population of elite, rural, landowning native-born white males. Two disenfranchised groups in particular, immigrants and free African-American laborers, had been petitioning the General Assembly for the right to vote for decades. [1]
These issues came to a head with the Dorr Rebellion in spring 1842. Although the rebellion was led by middle-class urban white males, it forced conservative leaders in Rhode Island to consider the larger question of expansion of suffrage.
In September 1842, a Constitutional Convention was held at the Colony House in Newport to confront the issue of expanding suffrage. [1] Black civil rights activists including Ichabod Northup and James Jefferson pushed for the right to vote; they were joined by whites including Crawford Allan, future governor James Y. Smith, reformer Thomas Robinson Hazard, and The Providence Journal editor Henry Bowen Anthony. [1]
When the constitution was put to a public vote in November 1842, a ballot question asked whether voting rights should be restricted to whites only. Voters rejected the restriction by a three to one margin, thus making Rhode Island the first state to grant suffrage to African-Americans. [1] The new constitution was ratified by an overwhelming vote of 7,024 to 51. [2] The turnout was meager, as the opposition boycotted the election. [2]
The constitution became effective in May 1843. [3] Much of the text of the 1663 charter language remained in the new version.[ citation needed ]
Article II, Section 1 of the 1842 constitution continued the requirement of the royal charter which held that only landowners with $134 in property could vote. (This provision would be overturned by a subsequent amendment.) The new constitution extended universal suffrage to all native adult males, including black males, for the first time in Rhode Island history, provided they met property holding and residency requirements.
The constitution specifically prohibited members of the Narragansett Indian Tribe from voting. (Article II, Section 4.) [4]
Naturalized citizens, mainly Irish Catholics, remained largely disenfranchised by the property requirements which remained in the new Constitution. [1]
Another progressive feature of the new constitution was that it outlawed slavery in Rhode Island. (Article 1, Section 4.) This provision, however, was largely symbolic as the 1840 census listed only five enslaved persons in Rhode Island.
In 1984, Rhode Island voters approved a referendum proposal to call a new Constitutional Convention, which was elected in November 1985 and convened in January 1986. [5] The new constitution was ratified by the voters in the general election of November 1986. On January 20, 1987, "the state's first new constitution in 144 years was officially entered into the state Archives". [6]
Rhode Island is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly less than 1.1 million residents as of 2020; but Rhode Island has grown at every decennial count since 1790 and is the second-most densely populated state, after New Jersey. The state takes its name from the eponymous island, though nearly all of its land area is on the mainland. Rhode Island borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound; and shares a small maritime border with New York, east of Long Island. Providence is its capital and most populous city.
Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that found certain grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voting rights to be unconstitutional. Though these grandfather clauses were superficially race-neutral, they were designed to protect the voting rights of illiterate white voters while disenfranchising black voters.
The Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842) was an attempt by disenfranchised residents to force broader democracy in the U.S. state of Rhode Island, where a small rural elite was in control of government. It was led by Thomas Wilson Dorr, who mobilized the disenfranchised to demand changes to the state's electoral rules. The state was still using its 1663 colonial charter as a constitution; it required that voters own land as qualification to vote. The rebellion established a parallel government alongside the existing chartered government and wrote a new constitution for Rhode Island. Although the rebellion was crushed militarily, it forced the rewriting of the state constitution to expand eligibility to vote.
The State of Rhode Island General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. A bicameral body, it is composed of the lower Rhode Island House of Representatives with 75 representatives, and the upper Rhode Island Senate with 38 senators. Members are elected in the general election immediately preceding the beginning of the term or in special elections called to fill vacancies. There are no term limits for either chamber. The last General Assembly election took place on November 3, 2020.
Voting rights in the United States, specifically the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been a moral and political issue throughout United States history.
Thomas Wilson Dorr, was an American politician and reformer in Rhode Island, best known for leading the Dorr Rebellion.
Universal manhood suffrage is a form of voting rights in which all adult male citizens within a political system are allowed to vote, regardless of income, property, religion, race, or any other qualification. It is sometimes summarized by the slogan, "one man, one vote".
The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia is the document that defines and limits the powers of the state government and the basic rights of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Like all other state constitutions, it is supreme over Virginia's laws and acts of government, though it may be superseded by the United States Constitution and U.S. federal law as per the Supremacy Clause.
The history of Rhode Island is an overview of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and the state of Rhode Island from pre-colonial times to the present.
The Law and Order Party of Rhode Island was a short-lived political party in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in the 1840s, brought into existence as a consequence of the Dorr Rebellion.
Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states at the turn of the 20th century. Efforts were also made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights on the basis of race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper, but were implemented in ways that purposely suppressed black voters.
The Old Colony House, also known as Old State House or Newport Colony House, is located at the east end of Washington Square in the city of Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It is a brick Georgian-style building completed in 1741, and was the meeting place for the colonial legislature. From independence in 1776 to the early 20th century, the state legislature alternated its sessions between here and the Rhode Island State House in Providence.
Since the Great Depression, Rhode Island politics have been dominated by the Rhode Island Democratic Party, and the state is considered part of the Democrats' "Blue Wall." Democrats have won all but four presidential elections since 1928, with the exceptions being 1952, 1956, 1972, and 1984. The Rhode Island Republican Party, although virtually non-existent in the Rhode Island General Assembly, has remained competitive in gubernatorial elections, having won one as recently as 2006. Until 2014, Democrats did not win a gubernatorial election in the state since 1992, and it was not until 2018 that they won one by double digits. The Rhode Island General Assembly has continuously been under Democratic control since 1959.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to the U.S. State of Rhode Island:
The Rhode Island Royal Charter provided royal recognition to the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, approved by England's King Charles II in July 1663. It outlined many freedoms for the inhabitants of Rhode Island and was the guiding document of the colony's government over a period of 180 years.
Seth Luther was an American antebellum workers' and suffrage organizer based in Providence, Rhode Island. A carpenter by trade, Luther was renowned in his time for his oratory skills and early work to organize workers into trade unions in the New England area. He was a key player in Rhode Island's Dorr Rebellion of 1842, where the working people of Rhode Island took up arms in an ill-fated crusade to expand voting to non-property holding men. Later in life, he was arrested and institutionalized after trying to rob a bank in the name of American President James K. Polk. He died in the Brattleboro Asylum on April 29, 1863. In 2001, the Rhode Island Heritage Society inducted Luther into its Hall of Fame in recognition of his pioneering work on behalf of union organizing in Rhode Island.
Catharine R. Williams was a Rhode Island writer and poet and a leading figure in the Dorr Rebellion in support of universal suffrage. In 2002, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.
This is a timeline of voting rights in the United States. The timeline highlights milestones when groups of people in the United States gained voting rights, and also documents aspects of disenfranchisement in the country.
Even before women's suffrage in Rhode Island efforts took off, women were fighting for equal male suffrage during the Dorr Rebellion. Women raised money for the Dorrite cause, took political action and kept members of the rebellion in exile informed. An abolitionist, Paulina Wright Davis, chaired and attended women's rights conferences in New England and later, along with Elizabeth Buffum Chace, founded the Rhode Island Women's Suffrage Association (RIWSA) in 1868. This group petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for an amendment to the state constitution to provide women's suffrage. For many years, RIWSA was the major group providing women's suffrage action in Rhode Island. In 1887, a women's suffrage amendment to the state constitution came up for a voter referendum. The vote, on April 6, 1887, was decisively against women's suffrage.
Alfred Niger was a free Black activist who lived in Providence, Rhode Island and worked as a barber. Niger was a leading influential figure in the movement for Black suffrage in early 19th century Rhode Island, during the onset of the Dorr Rebellion.