History
While the Populist call for “more democracy” was gaining strength
throughout most of the nation, Virginia’s ruling Democratic Party was
giving its citizens less democracy. In May 1901, voters elected 100
delegates to a state constitutional convention, 89 of them Democrats. The
new constitution they approved included a poll tax and a literacy test,
both designed to prevent poor whites and blacks from voting. The
delegates did not even submit the new constitution to the voters for