Northern free states stripped Black voting rights even as they abolished slavery

Evidence

In New York, for example, a new 1821 state constitution imposed a hefty $250 property qualification on Black voters while it eliminated property requirements for white voters. Pennsylvania disenfranchised Black men altogether in 1838 by a change to its constitution. While being a citizen did not guarantee the vote—white women were citizens without the franchise in this period—the loss of voting rights was a step backward for men who were building a claim to full belonging. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 708

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reframing-vs-deviation thread and to the broader narrative of Northern complicity; also relevant to the reader’s origin-stories-as-infrastructure frame. — connects to: New York honored slave-state property rights even after abolishing slavery in 1827 — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 39; Free northern states like Illinois erected legal barriers to black settlement — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1268