A Shadow Over The Election

ASK YOURSELF THIS
IMPORTANT QUESTION:
WHAT HAVE I PERSONALLY DONE TO
MAINTAIN Segregation?

If the answer disturbs you, probe deeper and decide what you are willing to do to preserve racial harmony in Selma and Dallas County.

Is it worth four dollars to prevent a "Birmingham" here? That's what it costs to be a member of your Citizens' Council, whose efforts are not thwarted by courts which give sit-in demonstrators legal immunity, prevent school boards from expelling students who participate in mob activities and would place federal referees at the board of voter registrars.

Law enforcement can be called only after these things occur, but your Citizens' Council prevents them from happening. . . .

Is it worth four dollars to you to prevent sit-ins, mob marches and wholesale Negro voter registration efforts in Selma?

(From the Selma Times Journal, Sunday, June 9, 1963, reprinted in James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p. 316)

The Washington Post article is about Blacks in Jacksonville, Florida who are finding new challenges to their voting rights.

Despite attempts by Florida officials to prevent a repeat of the controversy that dogged the last presidential election, black leaders said they are concerned that this year new registrations are being rejected for technical errors and that limited accessibility to early polling places could lead to more disputes, roiling Florida and the nation long after Election Day.

For me, the key part of Jeanne's quote from the article was here:

records show that the number of blacks added to the rolls since 2000 approximately equals the number of non-Hispanic whites.

You see, Jacksonville is in Duval County, one of the Florida counties that historically has been part of the Southern Black Belt. Black Belt counties have typically been the seat of some of the fiercest White Supremacism. In Dallas County, Alabama for example,

the ratio was 57.7 percent "nonwhites" to 42.3 percent [whites] (census figures for 1960). Of the blacks, 84 percent existed on less than three thousand dollars a year and 82 percent of those who worked held jobs as maids, janitors, farm and other kinds of laborers, truck drivers, and helpers. Of the blacks over twenty-five years old, 95 percent had less than a high school education, while 62 percent had completed six years or less of school. Among the whites on the other hand, 81 percent had incomes of three thousand dollars a year or more while 73 percent fell into the better paid and more desirable job categories, and only 11 percent had six or less years of school.

In Dallas County, only 130 black people were registered to vote out of an eligible 15,115 according to a 1961 Civil Rights Commission report. Adjoining Wilcox County had never had a black voter, although its population was 78 percent black. Lowndes County, which also borders Dallas and also has a huge black majority, had never had registered black person either. . . . During the Civil War Selma had been one of the most important military depots of the Confederacy. In 1963 it was the birthplace and stronghold of the White Citizens' Council, the authors of that advertisement in the Selma Times Journal. Nothing had changed. (Forman, 317-18)

Black citizens were excluded from voting in order to deprive them of resources and power. It's important to say this because, while there is all too much truth in the caricature of the racist, seething with pathological hatred for Blacks, such images limit racism to something individually felt, something that is largely emotional and reactive. It is that, of course, but personalized, visceral race hatred goes hand in hand with calculated deprivations of rights and resources—thus our country's infamous voter application forms and literacy tests as well as the orchestrated terror campaigns of the KKK designed to intimidate and subdue Blacks.

Is it hyperbolic to note that Florida has one of the more active Klans in the country and that Jacksonville has its own chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens? I would say, no. I believe these facts, along with a perusal of Jacksonville's history, are essential for understanding the recent events in Duval County and what goes on in Florida elections in general. But let's stay closer to the article Jeanne brought to our attention. Here's what she quoted in full:

[i]n Duval County, 31,155 black voters had been added to the rolls by the end of last week. That is more than the total number of ballots nullified here four years ago, in a race that George W. Bush won by 537 votes.

But hundreds more could show up at the polls only to find they cannot vote. The office has flagged 1,448 registrations as incomplete, and as of last week had yet to process 11,500 more.

A Washington Post analysis found nearly three times the number of flagged Democratic registrations as Republican. Broken down by race, no group had more flagged registrations than blacks.

This, in a heavily GOP county where records show that the number of blacks added to the rolls since 2000 approximately equals the number of non-Hispanic whites.

When Jeanne comments on voter registrars who are "really picky about accepting new voter registrations -- but only in a county that has a huge increase in the registration of black voters," she's alluding to this part of the article, which she didn't quote:

Secretary of State Glenda E. Hood, a Republican appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, recently ruled that for registrations to be deemed complete, new voters must not only sign an oath attesting to their citizenship, but also check a box that states the same. Unlike many counties, which have chosen to ignore the directive, Duval County chose to enforce it.

You see we've gone from literacy tests to more mundane forms of bureaucratic obstructionism and from White Citizens' Councils to Councils of Conservative Citizens.

To paraphrase H. Rap Brown, the disenfranchisement of Black voters is as American as cherry pie. Racist manipulations of voter registration and election outcomes is not just about stealing elections. It is about protecting unequal distributions of resources by directly thwarting Black participation in the political process and by barraging Blacks with different forms of the message that their participation is unimportant and inessential to the function of our society.

While I'm writing all of this, I'm thinking about a conversation that was going on in my yoga class last night when I walked in. My teacher, a wise, intellectual woman who is in her early sixties, was explaining that she never votes. I came in too late to catch her main point, but one of my fellow students was encouraging her to register before today's registration deadline in Massachusetts. He said that even here, where Kerry's victory is assured, it is important to vote. Otherwise we send the message that we don't care that much about what happens. Another student was saying how he wasn't going to vote because he plans to spend November 2 in New Hampshire, helping to get the vote out. Why not get an absentee ballot, the first student asked? Second student said going to New Hampshire is more important; it's a swing state.

As the deadlines for voter registration are starting to pass, I want to make a last plea that EVERYONE register and then go and vote—but not just because we need to do everything possible to get George W. Bush out of office. To readers who are white, like myself, I want to say this: when white Americans don't vote, we're saying that we take our power for granted. If we oppose George Bush, and if we oppose the interests of his racist base, we have to take opportunities to use our power as voters and to make clear demonstrations of where we stand. Otherwise we help broadcast our nation's constant message, the one that never has to be uttered out loud to be powerfully clear, that some members of our society deserve their rights and others don't.

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Images:
Map from Ronald C. Wimberley and Libby V. Morris, 1997, The Southern Black Belt: A National Perspective, Lexington: TVA Rural Studies Press, reprinted at http://sasw.chass.ncsu.edu/s&a/grad/ruralcom.htm.
Citizens' Council insignia from the back cover of a 1957 White Citizens' Council pamphlet, digitized at Middle Passage and African American History Museum.