Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902

The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902 was an assembly of delegates elected by the voters to write the fundamental law of Virginia. The 1902 Constitution severely restricting suffrage among blacks and whites was proclaimed without submitting it to the people.

In May 1900, the increasing public dismay over the electoral fraud and corruption of the Democratic machine under U.S. Senator Thomas S. Martin led to a narrow victory over the entrenched "court house crowd” in a referendum to call a constitutional convention.

Reformers seeking to expand the influence of the “better sort” of voters gained a majority by appealing to the electorate to overthrow the 1868 Underwood Constitution, that the Richmond Dispatch characterized as “that miserable apology to organic law which was forced upon Virginians by carpetbaggers, scalawags and Negroes supported by Federal bayonets”.

The tone was set by the Progressive editor of the Lynchburg News, Carter Glass, who would later hold a U.S. Senate seat for 26 years, believed that the purpose of the convention was “the elimination of every Negro who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the strength of the white electorate.” Progressives also had a deep distrust of the influence railroads had over state legislatures, and Convention delegate A. Caperton Braxton of Staunton, while agreeing that “negroes should be excluded from the right to hold office in this state”, was also concerned that the state regulate railroads, that the Convention had to decide whether “the people or the railroads would control the government of the Commonwealth.”

The Convention met from June 12, 1901 - June 26, 1902, at Richmond in the Capitol Building and elected John Goode, Jr. its presiding officer. Progressives sought to reform corrupt political practices of the Martin political machine and to regulate railroads and big corporations. Martin delegates agreed to restrict suffrage of African-Americans and illiterate whites, and a State Corporation Commission was established, but the Martin machine persisted in controlling Virginia politics until his death. The Convention’s president, John Goode of Bedford City, had been a secessionist voting in Richmond’s 1861 Secession Convention. He opened the Convention in 1901 explaining that voting was not a natural right, it was a “social right an must necessarily be regulated by society…”, though any regulation could not violate the Constitution of the United States. While there was “no prejudice, no animosity against the members of the colored race”, the wisest of Virginia’s leaders had counseled against universal negro suffrage as “a crime against civilization and Christianity.”

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