Elections in Georgia in 1868 were plagued by widespread Ku Klux Klan violence aimed at murdering or intimidating newly freed African Americans.
[1] Still, 33 African Americans — 30 in the lower house, 3 in the state senate — were elected in heavily Black areas, making up about one-sixth of the 197-member legislature.
After losing votes for their preferred candidates for the U.S. Senate, the white majority conspired to remove the black and mixed-ethnicity members from the Assembly on the grounds they were ineligible to hold office under the Georgia Constitution.
From that point, the General Assembly accomplished the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, chose new senators to go to Washington, and adopted public education.
[citation needed] After the Democrats took office they began to enact harsh recriminations against Republicans and African Americans, using terror, intimidation, and the Ku Klux Klan,[6] leading to disenfranchisement by the 1890s.
Afterwards, no African American held a seat in the Georgia legislature until civil rights attorney Leroy Johnson, a Democrat, was elected to the state senate in 1962.
The construction of this monument was funded by the Black Caucus of the Georgia General Assembly, a group of African-American State representatives and senators who are committed to the principles and ideals of the Civil Rights Movement organized in 1975.