56 Years After the Voting Rights Act the Fight is On Again

 

Veteran Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson shown with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the hundreds arrested Monday at the Capitol protesting in support of voting rights.

Note—This year we will forego our usual contemplation of the horrors of the first atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima to take note of another anniversary.

The anniversary of the Voting Rights Act generates more interest than usual this year because the gains once thought secure are under relentless attack Republican attack.  The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named in honor of the former Civil Rights champion and long-time member of the House of Representative which aims to reverse attacks on voting rights made in state after state under GOP control is stalled in the Senate under threat of a filibuster and with so-called moderate Democrats refusing to provide the votes necessary for Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie in the evenly divided body.

This week hundreds of protestors heeding the call of Rev. William Barber’s Moral Mondays and new Poor Peoples Campaign were arrested at the Capitol in Washington D.C. demanding an end to the filibuster, enactment of the Lewis Voting Rights Act, and other critical fairness and parity reforms.  In Texas, which is trying to pass some of the most draconian voter suppression bill in the country, there was a four-day Georgetown to Washington March involving thousands including Transportation Secretary and former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke.  State and local marches and events are being held nation-wide. 

Rev. William Barber, Jr. (center) led the Georgetown to Austin March in Texas this week.

Under Section 5 of the landmark 1965 civil rights law, jurisdictions with a history of discrimination needed to seek pre-approval of changes in voting rules that could affect minorities.  It blocked discrimination before it occurred. In Shelby County V. Holder last year the Trump packed Supreme Court invalidated Section 4—which laid out criteria for identifying states and localities covered by Section 5—claiming that current conditions require a new coverage formula.  That left Section 5 intact but unenforceable.  The conservative majority on the court claimed that Congress could easily adopt a new formula and restore enforcement, knowing full well that with the House of Representatives then in the iron grip of reactionary Republican majorities and control of the Senate that no remedy would be enacted.

Since then, attacks on voting rights have intensified across the country—and not just in the old Deep South.  Republican Legislatures and Governors have enacted waves of legislation aimed at curbing or discouraging voting by minorities and any groups of voters suspected of possible Democratic tendencies.  In the name of fighting a virtually nonexistent form of voter fraud—registration and voting by non-citizens misrepresenting their status—burdensome proof of identity legislation, including very limited numbers of approved identification documents and fees and charges for attaining those documents.  Places where applicants can obtain documents have been reduced requiring burdensome travel and their hours of operation restricted.  Students have been barred from registering where they attend college, even if they life there year round.  Early voting periods have been reduced and restricted.  Polling places have been eliminated and consolidated in minority areas to guarantee long and discouraging lines.  It seems like new and creative ways to curb registration or discourage voting are introduced every year, churned out by as model legislation by some rightwing think tank and spreading from Red State to Red State like a virus.

Many, maybe even most, of these restrictions eventually get struck down in the courts, but not before having their desired effect for an election cycle or two.  With Section 4 in place, many of these changes would have been stopped by Federal review before they were even put in place. 

Meanwhile there is a growing rank-and-file movement to reclaim voting rights in the same way as they were first won at bitter cost to begin with—with street protests and civil disobedience.  The NAACP’s Moral Monday movement in South Carolina is a model for a new activism and a movement that has been called the Selma of the 21st Century.

Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Among the witnesses are Senate Co-Sponsor and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. , Benjamin Hooks and Rosa Parks.

On August 6, 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark National Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a ceremony at the White House attended by leaders of both parties in Congress and Civil Rights leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Benjamin Hooks. 

My generation, which grew up protesting the War in Vietnam, grew to regard Johnson as “the enemy.”  Yet his record on domestic issues was unmatched by any President except Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  His Great Society programs, though far from perfect, were the last great systematic assault on poverty in our history.  And this Texas wheeler-dealer accomplished what Northern liberal John F. Kennedy never could—a comprehensive legislative attack on discrimination and the subjugation of Black citizens. 

Perhaps we expected that subsequent Democratic Presidents would take up where Johnson left off without the stain of a fruitless war.  The fact is that whatever their intentions, none of them did.  The previous year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened doors of public accommodations in response to ongoing campaigns by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), branches of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP), and others. 

But the historic pattern of restricting voting by Blacks through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright intimidation that was the hallmark of the Jim Crow era after Southern Whites dismantled the reforms of post-Civil War Reconstruction, remained untouched.  With new militancy the SCLC and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) turned to campaigns to register voters. 

Voting rights demonstrations across the South, often brutally suppressed, like the first attempt of a march from Selma Alabama where young John Lewis had his skull fractured and the deaths of White civil rights workers pressured Lyndon Johnson to act and ultimately gave him the leverage to get an act through Congress.   In memory of his sacrifices the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act aims at protecting those gains and extending them.

That campaign took a bloody, violent turn in Selma, Alabama earlier that year. Marchers attempting to reach the local Court House to register were attacked and many severely beaten. Black demonstrator, Jimmy Lee Johnson, was killed during a march in near-by Marion City.  Then James Reeb, a White Unitarian Universalist Minister who had responded to a call by Dr. King for support, was beaten to death shortly after arriving in the city. 

Johnson instinctively knew that the death of the White minister would galvanize public sentiment and support in the way no number of Black deaths could. A few days later a massive Selma to Montgomery march was turned back with violence at the Edmund Pettis Bridge—Bloody Sunday.   

On March 15, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to call for the Voting Rights Act. It was introduced in the Senate on March 18 by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois. 

A second March to Montgomery, this time under the protection of Federal Authorities, got underway on March 21 and arrived at the Alabama capital for a massive rally on March 25 with the renewed purpose to supporting the Voting Rights Act.  After the rally a white Unitarian Universalist volunteer from Michigan, Viola Liuzzo, was shot and killed while driving a Black demonstrator back to Selma. 

The deaths of a white minister and a white woman volunteer during the Selma Campaign spurred Congress to action on the Voting Rights act in a way the vastly more numerous murders of Black activists like Jimmy Lee Jackson had ever done.  White privilege thus leveraged the landmark act.  At least the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) recognized the sacrifice of Jackson along side UUs Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo in the memorial plaque that hangs in their Boston headquarters.

That only stepped up pressure on Congress, where despite a fierce last line of resistance by Southern Democrats, a filibuster was broken, and the measure passed the upper chamber on May 26.   The vote was 77-19 with 47 Democrats in favor, 17 opposed and 30 Republicans—who still were proud to be the party of Lincoln—in favor and 2 opposed. 

Delaying tactics and attempts at gutting the measure by amendment slowed action in the House of Representatives but it passed with minor amendments on a vote of 333-85 when Congress reconvened from the Independence Day recess on July 9.  A Conference Committee reconciliation of the two versions cleared the House on August 3 and the Senate the next day. 

Johnson wasted no time scheduling a signing ceremony for August 6, just allowing enough time for major Civil Rights figures including King and Rosa Parks to attend. 

 

Focus on Black History 2021

Black Americans made plenty of history over the past year.  In addition to their traditional role as victims of White supremacy and ingrained racism—think George Floyd and the litany of other victims of police violence and as the targets of a seemingly endless supply of Karens berating people for simply living their lives—African Americans have also seized the moment to profoundly change society.  Most powerful is the on-going Black Lives Matter Movement that took to the streets for months to confront the daily terror that People of Color face at the hands of authority and would not back down.  Not only did that movement spread to every corner of the country, it enlisted as allies people—especially young people—of every race and ethnicity.  A Norwegian Parliamentarian has just nominated the movement for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Rev, William Barber and the new Poor People's campaign respresent a renewal of the Civil Rights movement and grass-roots organizing.

Other examples include the Rev. William Barber’s Moral Monday movement and the New Poor People’s Campaign representing a re-birth of the Civil Rights Movement.  Black folks ran for office at all levels in every part of the country and often triumphed despite desperate opposition and voter suppression.  Kamala Harris’s election as Vice President may have been the most apparent manifestation but the sophisticated and comprehensive voting rights campaign and the voter turn-out operation  by Stacey Abrams and a legion of others carried Georgia for the Biden-Harris ticket and elected two Senators in a deep red, Deep South State including Raphael Warnock the pastor of Martin Luther King’s old church and Jon Ossoff, a young Jewish film documentarian and journalist.  Together with Kamala Harris presiding in the chair they shifted control of the Senate to the Democrats.  For her achievements Abrams, too, has been nominated for the Nobel Prize. 

Work by Stacy Abrams and many others in Georgia set the stage for both the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and achieving functional control of the United States Senate

The Biden administration has nominated Blacks to top rank positions including Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense, Marcia Fudge as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and others to the Cabinet Rank positions of Environmental Protection Agency Director, Ambassador to the United Nations, and Chair of the Council of Joint Economic Advisors.  In addition many Black have been or are expected to be appointed to top sub-cabinet positions and have key positions on the White House staff. 

Closer to home for Illinoisans Lori Lightfoot became Mayor of Chicago last spring carrying 49 of 50 Wards.  She took office just in time to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter Protests, and a serious crime wave.  Now she is wrestling with the militant Chicago Teacher’s Union over plans to return to in-person learning.

Meanwhile in the Illinois legislature the Black Caucus got a landmark criminal justice reform act passed in the veto session.  The measure laid down a schedule to ending cash bail, requiring police body cameras for all law enforcement agencies, new procedures for certifying officers, and not requiring signatures of police misconduct complaints.  Howls of outrage are still being heard over these reforms.  And in the new General Assembly Representative Chris Welch replaced long-time Speaker of the House Mike Madigan.

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett helped develope the Moderna vaccine for the Coronavirus and represents advancements by Black women in medicine and science.

On the Coronavirus front, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett led a National Institute of Health vaccine development team that developed the Moderna vaccine.  Covid-19 has disproportionately ravaged the Black community where many are employed in service occupations which cannot be done from home and which exposes them to the public and possible infections.  Many work in health care including Doctors, nurses, technicians, aide, and other staff.  Their heroic work like that of first responders and other essential personnel has come at a heavy cost.    

Of course this just skims the surface of a tumultuous year.  And it does not even include notable achievements in the arts, media, sciences, religion, philanthropy, community service, and family dynamics.  Black history has been unfolding all around us.  And it always has.  For too long it was suppressed both to strip African-Americans of a sense of rootedness and self-worth and to protect White folks from feeling that they were not the only thing that counted.

That is what Black History Month was intended to address.  The roots of the annual observance stretch back to 1926 when Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be Negro History Week.  Woodson, who died in 1950, spent the rest of his life promoting historical awareness in both academia and the community.  There was plenty of resistance in the first case and the revelation of an untapped hunger in the second.

In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and especially the Black Power movement of the 1970’s Black history finally began to take hold as a recognized academic discipline and as part of the curriculum in public and private schools.  The first Black History Month was celebrated at Kent State University in Ohio.  By 1976 President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month, during the celebration of the United States Bicentennial.

Since then Black History month has spread and now usually adopts a theme each year. This year the theme is The Black Family:  Representation, Identity, and Diversity, most apt since those families are under enormous strain.

By the early 21st Century the media and many corporations seemed to have coopted the month in an attempt to pander to the Black community and inoculate themselves against charges of institutional racism.  Ubiquitous Black History Moments on television promoted hero worship of individual “pioneers” often without any context to a broader struggle or the experience of ordinary Black people.  It has also drawn criticism for “ghettoizing” Black history and confining it to a silo without connection to American history as a whole.  Actor and director Morgan Freeman declared “I don’t want a Black history month. Black history is American history.”

Black History Month must always keep in mind the sacrifices of participation of the many in the Civil Rights movement like these women in the 1963 March for Jobs and Justice in Washington.  They made Dr. Martin Luther King's soaring rhetoric a reality.

I’m well aware of these pitfalls as a White writer, amateur historian, and hope-to-be ally.  Yet I think there is still much to be learned if Black History can be placed in its broadest context and include the struggles and sacrifices of the many as well as iconic figures.  That’s what Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout will try to do for the rest of the month.

We will be assembling a wide variety of posts from many years on this blog, updating them as necessary and adding new ones.  Feel free to respond with criticism, questions, and suggestions.