In 1946, Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo instructed his followers that the way to keep black people from voting was to get “the tar and feathers and don’t forget the match.” In the Jim Crow South, African Americans faced bullets, beatings, lynching and more for trying to cast a ballot. Over the years the weapon has gotten much more sophisticated, the language a bit more genteel, but the goal has been just the same: maintain power by keeping American citizens away from the voting booth.