judiciary six years, provided for quadrennial sessions of the legislature, and introduced the office of lieutenant-governor. The passage of local or special bills by the legislature was prohibited. A provision intended to prevent lobbying is that no one except legislators and the representatives of the press may be admitted to the floor of the House except by unanimous vote. No executive official can succeed himself in office, and the governor cannot be elected or appointed to the United States Senate, or to any state office during his term as governor, or within one year thereafter. Sheriffs whose prisoners suffer mob violence may be impeached. The constitution eliminated the negro from politics by a suffrage clause which went into effect in 1903. This limits the right to vote to those who can read and write any article of the constitution of the United States, and have worked or been regularly engaged in some lawful employment, business or occupation, trade or calling for the greater part of the twelve months next preceding the time they offer to register, unless prevented from labour or ability to read and write by physical disability, or who own property assessed at $300 upon which the taxes have been paid; but those who have served in the army or navy of the United States or of the Confederate States in time of war, their lawful descendants in every degree, and persons of good character “who understand the duties and obligations of citizenship under a republican form of government,” are relieved from the operation of this law provided they registered prior to the 20th of December 1902. The second of these exceptions is known as the “Grandfather Clause.” No man may vote in any election who has not by the 1st of February next preceding that election paid all poll taxes due from him to the state. In 1902 nine-tenths of the negroes in the state were disqualified from voting.[1] The constitution of 1901 (like that of 1867) and special statutes require separate schools for white and negro children. A “Jim Crow” law was enacted in 1891. Buying, selling or offering to buy or sell a vote has for penalty disfranchisement, and since 1891 the Australian ballot system has been used. The governor, auditor and attorney-general are required to prepare and present to each legislature a general revenue bill, and the secretary of state, with the last two officers, constitute a board of pardons who make recommendations to the governor, who, however, is not bound to follow their advice in the exercise of his pardoning power. State officials are forbidden to accept railway passes from railway companies, and individuals are forbidden to receive freight rebates. The constitution of 1901 exempted a homestead of 80 acres of farm land, or of a house and lot not exceeding $2000 in value, from liability for any debt contracted since the 30th of July 1868 except for a mortgage on it to which the wife consented; personal property to the value of $1000 is exempted. Under the civil code of 1897 the earnings of a wife are her separate property, and it is provided that “no woman, nor any boy under age of twelve years, shall be employed to work or labour in or about any mine in this state.” By acts of 1903 child labour under 12 years is forbidden in any factory unless for support of “a widowed mother or aged or disabled father,” or unless the child is an indigent orphan; “no child under the age of ten years shall be so employed under any circumstances.” Certificates of children’s ages are necessary before a child is employed; false certification is forbidden under penalty of a fine of from $5 to $100 or hard labour not exceeding three months. No child under 13 may do night work at all. No child under 16 may do more than 48 hours a week of night work. No child of less than 12 is allowed to work more than 66 hours in any one week. An able-bodied parent who does not work when he has the opportunity, unless “idle under strike orders, or lock-outs,” and who hires out his minor children, is declared a vagrant and may be fined $500 and imprisoned or sentenced to hard labour for not more than six months.
All amendments to the constitution must be approved by a three-fifths vote of each house of the legislature and then ratified by the people. The legislature of 1900–1901 established a department of archives and history whose aim is to preserve documents and historical records.
Education.—Public education for Mobile was authorized by the legislature of 1826, but it was not provided until 1852. Two years later (1854) a school system for the entire state was inaugurated. Its support was derived from public land given by the United States to the state of Alabama for educational purposes in 1819, and special taxes or tuition fixed by each township. The Civil War demoralized the nascent system. An important step in its revival seemed to be made in the constitution of 1868, which forbade any private recompense for instruction in the public schools and appropriated one-fifth of the state’s revenue to common schools. But the attempt to teach whites and blacks in the same schools, and the corruption in the administration of funds, made the results unsatisfactory. The constitution of 1875 abolished the one-fifth revenue provision, made the support of the schools, except that derived from the land grant of 1819, and poll taxes, depend upon the appropriation of the legislature, and established separate schools for whites and blacks. Progress has been slow but steady. According to the constitution of 1901 the legislature is required to levy, in addition to the poll tax, an annual tax for education at the rate of 30 to 65 cents on the hundred dollars’ worth of property, and practically every county in the state had made in 1906 an appropriation for its schools of a one mill tax on $100. The school fund in 1900 amounted to $1,000,000, an increase of 37% over the average annual fund of the preceding decade; for the year ending the 30th of September 1907 the amount certified for apportionment by the state was $1,150,261·40, and the total annual expenditure was about $1,600,000; in 1906 the school census showed 697,465 children of school age. The legislature of 1907 voted an increase of $300,000 in the appropriation for the common school fund, and granted state-aid for rural school-houses; but its most important work probably was the establishment of county high schools. The rural schools have an annual term of five to seven months only. The percentage of illiterates declined from 50·97% in 1880 to 41% in 1890, and 34% in 1900, when Alabama ranked third among the states in illiteracy.
There are also a number of institutions for higher education in Alabama. The most important of these are the university of Alabama (co-educational—opened in 1831), at Tuscaloosa, the institution being part of the public school system maintained by the state; the Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, a “state college for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts,” organized in 1872 according to the United States land grant act for the promotion of industrial education; the Southern University (incorporated 1856—Methodist Episcopal, South), at Greensboro; Howard College (Baptist), at East Lake (Birmingham); Spring Hill College (1830—Roman Catholic), near Mobile; Talladega College (for negroes), at Talladega; the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (for negroes), at Tuskegee; and state normal schools at Florence, Jacksonville, Troy and Livingston, and, for negroes, at Montgomery, Tuskegee and Normal.
Public Institutions.—Alabama supports various philanthropic and penal institutions: a home for Confederate veterans, at Mountain Creek; an institution for the deaf, an academy for the blind, and a school for the negro deaf, dumb and blind, all at Talladega; a hospital for the insane, opened in 1860, at Tuscaloosa; a penitentiary, established in 1839, at Wetumpka; and a state industrial school for white boys, at East Lake (Birmingham), and a state industrial school for white girls at Montevallo.
- ↑ In Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 474, a negro asked that the defendant board of registry be required to enrol his name and the names of other negroes on the registration lists, and that certain sections of the constitution of Alabama be declared void as being contrary to the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the federal constitution. The Supreme Court dismissed the bill on the grounds that equity has no jurisdiction over political matters; that, assuming the fraudulent character of the objectionable constitutional provisions, the court was in effect asked to assist in administering a fraud; and that relief “must be given by them [the people of the state] or by the legislative and political departments of the government of the United States.” The case attracted much attention; and it is often erroneously said that the court upheld the disfranchising clauses of the Alabama constitution.
