When Ike Went Where the Founders Would Not

 

President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation making "In God We Trust" the official National Motto.  He surrounded himself with clergy making sure to include a Muslim, a Rabbi, and Buddhist but significantly none of the Catholic prelates who had been the motto's driving force.  The non-observant casually religious President was clearly uneasy over the implications of what he was doing.

The crest of Cold War and Anti-Communist hysteria may have passed by July 30, 1956, but there was still plenty of residual energy.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, signed a bill that designated the words “In God We Trust” as the official Motto of the United States.  

The year before Congress acted to require that the phrase be put on all coins and bills. 

Of course, the U.S. had a de facto motto which had long been included on coins and currency—E Pluribus Unum, usually translated “out of many, one.”  That phrase was approved in 1792 for the Great Seal of the United States.  It did not satisfy fervid religionists. 

Indeed. the Great Seal itself, which was filled with Masonic and Deist symbolism without a hint Christian piety, had been a bone of contention since the first struggles over the proper role of religion in the Republic.  The largely Deist founders purposefully omitted any reference to God in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was silent on the subject except to prohibit Congress from the establishment of any religion or interfering with the religious observances of its citizens.  Practical men with a knowledge of history, they were concerned lest a favored religion or a defined heresy create civil discord and perhaps civil war.  

The Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum was on the ribbon in the national eagle's beak on the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States and was long considered the de facto motto of the United States.

Washington and Jefferson occasionally invoked a vague Deity, most often referred to Providence, Nature’s God, or sometimes the God of Creation, all common Deist constructions for an original moving force of the Universe.  They avoided terms like the Lord God which invoked the patriarchal deity of the Old Testament and never invoked Jesus Christ.  

John Adams, a true product of the Puritan tradition as it evolved eventually into Unitarianism, firmly believed that organized religion was necessary to constrain the “passions” of an innately sinful humanity.  Moreover, he was politically indebted for the support of the Black Legion—the clergy of the New England Standing Order—against “atheistic” Jeffersonian Republicanism.  Yet even he resisted considerable pressure to inject explicitly Christian prayer, practice, and symbolism into official use.

A complex battle between the evolving movements of Evangelical Protestantism and republican secularism see-sawed back and forth for the first decades of the nation’s existence.  Some compromises were unofficially reached, but on the whole, the government remained resolutely secular, and even Presidents were not expected to make personal religious declarations. 

During the crisis of the Civil War, however, President Abraham Lincoln needed the fervent support of the Protestant clergy, particularly its avidly abolitionist voices.  Not a personally “saved” Christian, and deeply influenced by the Founder’s secular Deism, Lincoln non-the-less was a student of the Bible as literature and was adept at echoing its cadences and invoking powerful Biblical language in his speeches.  But he was always being pressed by the clergy to make more overt religious statements.  

Secretary of the Treasury Samuel Chase put in God We Trust on a Civil War era 2 cent piece.

It was in this context that Lincoln called for national days of fasting and Thanksgiving.  He also undoubtedly approved when his Treasury Secretary, the devout Salmon P. Chase, first directed the Mint to inscribe the words “In God We Trust” on a two-cent coin issued in 1864.  The approbation of the preachers far outweighed the slight protests of Freethinkers.  Nonetheless, the idiom "not worth two cents" entered the language as a subtle protest to the inscription.

Over the next decades most—but not all—coins added the phrase as they were re-designed. 

Government issued Greenback currency, however, contained no religious declaration, just a practical promise to pay the bearer in specie upon demand. 

And so, the situation stayed until the dawn of the Cold War.  Then Catholics, who had long been reluctant to join with Protestants in any religious demands on the government because they assumed, quite rightly, that the Protestants would insist on narrow language that excluded Catholic practice, became particularly alarmed at the rise of “atheistic Communism” and the suppression of Catholic worship in the new Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe.  Leading anti-Communist Prelates launched a campaign to require “In God We Trust” on currency as well as all coins and to make it an official motto. 

Federal authorities, who were eager to use those same Bishops to influence the heavily Catholic industrial working class against “Communist infiltration” of the labor movement, were more than glad to add religious arrows to their crusade against Reds. 

When leading Protestant Evangelicals fell into line, the movement in Congress became irresistible even for those who were squeamish.  What Congressman wanted to be painted as voting against God? 

Controversy over the motto and its use on currency and coins has never gone away.  Church and state separation advocates, civil libertarians, and increasingly vocal atheist activists have repeatedly challenged the motto and its use on coins and currency in court.  And just as routinely have lost. 

In the case of Aronow v. United States in 1970, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, “It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency ‘In God We Trust’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise.”  The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.  In another case The Supreme Court upheld the motto in because it has “lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”  

Increasingly vocal and organized atheists have become the leading voice for protesting In God We Trust but their atheism may have entrenched support among the MAGA crowd and Christian Denomonists.

With public support of continued use of the motto on coins and currency standing at 90% in a 2003 Gallup Poll it does not appear that the phrase will be going away any time soon.

Despite Two Historic Constitutional Amendments the Battle for Voter Rights Rages Again

                        African Americans cast their first vote during Reconstruction,  In 1870 the 15th Amendment was meant to protect the right to vote. 

Anniversaries of two Amendments to the U.S. Constitution which protected and extended voting rights for African Americans and the poor were recently marked.  The 15th Amendment ratified on February 3, 1870, prohibited the Federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”  The 24th Amendment ratified on January 23, 1964 prohibited the Federal and state governments from imposing poll taxes.  Yet today voting rights are under sweeping attack not only in the states of the old Confederacy but everywhere Republicans control state legislatures and/or governorships. 

The 15th Amendment was the last and perhaps the least known of three dealing with slavery and the rights of the formerly enslaved. The 13th adopted as the Civil War was drawing to a close in 1865, finally abolished slavery in all states including those which remained loyal to the Union.  It was followed by the 14th in 1868 which guaranteed citizenship to former slaves as well as providing due process and equal protection under the law.  It is the basis for most modern civil rights laws and has been interpreted to cover other minorities and women as well as Blacks.  It is the most litigated of all Constitutional amendments and the center of intense struggle by liberals and conservatives on the Supreme Court.  The current Court has a right-wing majority thanks to appointments by Donald Trump and has demonstrated a willingness to roll back long-established rights. 

Under post-Civil War Reconstruction freed slaves had citizenship and voting rights under the protection of occupying Federal Troops in the former Confederacy.  Blacks and their Republican allies who were smeared as carpetbaggers by former Rebels were able to elect local officials, majorities in state legislatures, judges, governors, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.  Blacks thrived with new rights to own property, establish businesses, enter trades and professions, and to be educated. 

But even the most ardent supporters of Reconstruction recognized that it could not continue indefinitely.  Former Confederates who swore loyalty to the Union had their franchise restored as a condition of Southern states ratifying the 14th Amendment.  New generations of Whites became eligible voters when they reached maturity meaning that Whites—mostly Democrats—would inevitably return to power.  The 15th Amendment was meant to ensure that states and local governments would continue to respect the voting rights of Blacks.  

The passage of the 15th Amendment was celebrated in this print offered for sale to Black families.

It was a good and necessary idea because night riding and terrorism by groups like the Ku Klux Klan were already attacking and intimidating Black leaders and voters and even challenging Federal troops.  They were seen as armed extensions of un-reconstructed Democrats. 

The 15th Amendment was simple and clear.  It read: 

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. 

It might have been effective if Reconstruction was allowed to continue for a longer period.  Unfortunately,  1876 the Presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden was thrown into the House of Representatives despite Tilden’s narrow popular vote majority. After round upon round of fruitless votes in the House in which each state delegation cast one vote, a deal was struck electing Hayes in exchange for withdrawing troops from the South effectively ending Reconstruction in 1877. 

Without troops to enforce the Constitution, Blacks were quickly subjugated by force and intimidation.  Before 1890 virtually all Black office holders were gone.  Black voters were purged from the rolls, and state courts refused to recognize their rights.  Poll taxes and impossible literacy tests were just two of the “legal” means used to strip them of their voting rights.  The Jim Crow Era ushered in waves of new segregation laws and many Blacks were plunged back into a condition barely above official chattel slavery.  

Without Federal enforcement, the 15th Amendment was a virtual dead letter. 

After the protection of Federal troops was withdrawn ending Reconstruction the poll tax joined intimidation to usher in the Jim Crow era and the end to Black voting rights in the South.

The first poll tax became effective Georgia as early as 1871.  It was allowed under Reconstruction because the poll tax impacted poor Whites as well as Blacks.  The idea slowly spread and really took off after Federal troops were evacuated.  By 1905 all former Confederate states had adopted a poll tax in one form or another.  Several states required that all cumulative taxes be paid to vote meaning a would-be registrant of middle age could be held liable for all taxes since he or she turned 21. 

By the 1930s some states had abandoned the taxes, but six states retained them until 1966—Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. 

The states in light blue and red retained their poll taxes until the passage of the 24th Amendment,  Those in gray had not formally abandon them but kept them on the books despite being unenforced

Despite roll-backs in some states, the poll tax survived a legal challenge in the 1937 Supreme Court case Breedlove v. Suttles, which unanimously ruled that: 

[The] privilege of voting is not derived from the United States, but is conferred by the state and, save as restrained by the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments and other provisions of the Federal Constitution, the state may condition suffrage as it deems appropriate. 

Note that the Court characterized voting as a privilege instead of a right. 

Campaigns against poll taxes began in earnest after World War II causing some states to rescind their acts.  In 1948 Harry Truman considered a recommendation of his   President’s Committee on Civil Rights to legislatively act against the taxes but in the face of united opposition from Southern Democrats in Congress concluded that only a Constitutional Amendment would be effective.  During the post-war Red Scare and McCarthy Era, the movement to kill the tax in Congress and in the states ground almost to a halt as supporters were labeled Communists because the movement was led by avowed Marxists such as Alabama antiracist, civil rights activist, labor organizer Joseph Gelders, New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio, and W.E.B. Du Bois.   

Later in the 1950’s when the Civil Rights Movement in the South ramped up, so did political pressure to end the poll tax.  President John F. Kennedy administration urged Congress to adopt and send such an amendment to the states for ratification. He considered the Constitutional amendment the best way to avoid a filibuster, as the claim that federal abolition of the poll tax was unconstitutional would be moot. Some liberals opposed Kennedy’s action, feeling that an amendment would be too slow compared to legislation.  Florida Senator Spessard Holland, a conservative Democrat introduced the amendment in the 87th Congress. Holland had opposed most civil rights legislation during his career, and his support helped splinter the monolithic Southern opposition to the amendment. 

Chicago Defender headlines when the 24th Amendment was ratified.  Note the credit to most articles to the National Negro Press Association (NNPA), an alternative to the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI.)

Ratification of the amendment by state legislatures across the country was relatively quick, taking slightly more than a year from August 1962 to January 1964.  South Dakota became the 38th and deciding state to put it over the top.  Only two former Confederate states, Florida and Kentucky, and three Southern leaning Boarder states, Maryland, Tennessee, and Missouri were among the supporters. Mississippi outright rejected the amendment almost as soon as it cleared the U.S. Congress. Surprisingly, Georgia where the poll tax originated, passed the amendment unanimously in the Senate but did not pass the House before South Dakota secured adoption.  The issue was dropped there and never subsequently acted upon. 

Long after the amendment went into effect four additional Southern states finally ratified—Virginia in 1977, North Carolina in 1989, Alabama in 2002, and Texas in 2009.  It is safe to say if a vote was taken today, it would not pass in the last two states which have become more radically right wing and lead the country in voter suppression schemes.  Seven states still have not ratified and show no inclination to do so—Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and my old home state of Wyoming the “Equality State.” 

Even the passage of the amendment did not immediately end poll taxes.  Recalcitrant states maintained the onerous levies only applied to Federal elections for President, the House of Representatives, and the Senate and continued to require payment to participate in local and state elections.  Arkansas suspended its poll tax by referendum in the November 1964 General Election several months after the amendment was ratified and did not repeal all mention of the tax in the state constitution until 2008 but still refuses to ratify the Federal amendment.  Federal District Courts in Alabama and Texas struck down their poll taxes in late 1965.  The Supreme Court finally ruled in the case of Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections that poll taxes were unconstitutional even for state elections.  

It was the formal death knoll of the taxes, although attempts were made in some states to revive fees in some guise or another. Voter registration struggles intensified across the South with the Freedom Summer campaign spearheaded by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964 and the Selma campaign culminating with the March to Montgomery in1965.  Both efforts were met with violent police suppression, mass arrests, and several murders by the Ku Klux Klan.   

Norman Rockwell's stark and dramatic painting of the murder of voting rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner helped rally support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 which finally put teeth in enforcement of the 15th and 24th amendments.

Public horror at the murders of Freedom Summer activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner and the deaths of Jimmy Johnson, Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo during the Selma campaign led directly to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1965.  The act enforced voting rights guaranteed by the Constitution for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South.  As vigorously enforced by According to the Department of Justice, it was the most effective piece of Federal civil rights legislation ever enacted and one of the most far-reaching in history. 

Under the provisions of the Act states with histories of racially motivated interference and some counties with similar histories in other states were put under court review to any changes to their election laws.  That prevented repeated efforts to find new ways to suppress voting and led the wide-spread election of Black officials at every level in the South.  It was the most effective tool for guaranteeing access to the ballot for decades. 

But that critical tool was crippled by the Supreme Court in the case of Shelby County v. Holder when it ruled that a section of the Act which outlined a formula for judicial review of state laws violated the Constitutional principles of “equal sovereignty of the states” and federalism because its disparate treatment of the states is “based on 40 year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.” While the Court did not completely repeal judicial review, it so gutted it as to make practically moot.  Subsequent rulings have further narrowed applicability.  More recently, the Court struck down court review of most district Gerrymandering arguing how states draw lines if their business so long as districts are fairly equal in population.  

In response Red State legislatures stampeded with all sorts of laws aimed at restricting voter participation among minorities and other populations suspected of being sympathetic to Democrats or liberals.  Unlike original Jim Crow laws these actions are not meant to completely block minority voting but to make it as difficult and burdensome as possible to shave just enough of the vote away to guarantee the continued domination of white conservatives. 

Those outrages helped spark a revived Civil Rights Movement to combat the new voter repression with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act passed the House of Representatives with the full support of activists in the streets and President Joe Biden.  But in the upper chamber which was split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was able to block consideration of the measures as conservative Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona voted along with Republicans to oppose a filibuster rule change that would allow election legislation to pass with a simple majority.  Both stubborn Senators claimed they would support the acts but refused to allow a change to the “traditional” right of the minority to effectively block legislation with a 2/3rds majority required to end debate.  If the rule was modified or repealed Vice President Kamala Harris could have cast a tie breaking and deciding vote. 

Frustrated Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to call for a vote anyway “to put Republicans on record for supporting voting suppression.”  But he and the President acknowledge that there was no way forward to get the measures enacted. 

Angry voting rights activists vowed to take the fight back to the states.  Some were critical of Democrats and Biden for failing to keep promises to enact the legislation.  With a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court there is now nothing to really stand in the way of even more outrageous voter suppression laws and Gerrymandering that preserves White power.  

Under the return of the Orange Monster attacks have only increased.  Although many schemes are shot down at lower levels, the Supreme Court is respective to wink-and-nod go-arounds with iffy but plausible covers for discrimination. 

Perhaps most dangerously, he is trying to extort states to give up their voter data including registrations, voter histories, name, address and other personal information to prevent Federal funds for states from being sequestered, suspended, or canceled.  In the wrong hands, which is to say anyone under the control of the Resident, the dated could be used to harass or even label as “domestic terrorists” anyone with a history of “voting the wrong way.” 

The old pattern of rolling back Black and minority rights is repeating itself.  But it will be met with massive resistance.