Under the baobab: Voting rights are threatened once again

On Feb. 3, 1870 the American people ratified the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. 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.

I was not there. But my great-great grandfather, Curtis Mckenzie, was. He had fought in the Union Army to free his people from slavery and ensure them of their Constitutional rights, including the right to vote.

In 1896, the United States Supreme Court codified racial segregation and Jim Crow discrimination in Plessy vs. Ferguson. I was not there but my great-grandmother, Daisy, was. She used to tell me stories about what it was like when Black people were prevented from voting by unfairly enforced grandfather laws, poll taxes, literacy laws, lynchings and the terrorism of the KKK.

In 1954 Thurgood Marshall successfully argued Brown vs. Board of Education before the Supreme Court. It overturned Plessy and found that racial segregation and discrimination in public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. I was directly affected. Racial segregation became illegal by law but not by practice.

In 1964 over a 1,000 people led by Bob Moses, John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer and Aaron Henry, volunteered to go to Mississippi to register people to vote. Only 6.7% of African Americans in the state were registered. I was there. So were fellow activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, a Mississippi Black and two New York Jews. They were kidnapped and lynched by white supremacists.

The rest of us continued to register voters and petition folks to join the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. We presented those petitions at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. I was there walking the picket line. Fannie Lou Hamer pleaded our case to the credentials committee. President Johnson didn’t want to lose the southern white vote. So, the Convention recognized and seated the white supremacists instead of the MFDP. Johnson won in a landslide. He lost the deep South.

In 1965 John Lewis, Martin Luther King and the Rev. James Bevel organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, to petition for the people’s right to vote. They were attacked by the police at the Edmund-Pettus Bridge. Lewis was almost killed. Jimmy Lee Jackson, the Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo were killed. President Johnson, touched by events, got the Voting Rights Act (VRA) through Congress. It prohibited racial discrimination in voting. It re-franchised people of African descent in the South.

In 2013, in Shelby County vs. Holder, the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that Section 5 of the VRA, which required certain states and local governments to obtain federal pre-clearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4B which contained the coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions are subject to pre-clearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting, was unconstitutional. The court’s action permitted state legislatures leeway to pass more restrictive voting laws.

Since Shelby, 19 states have implemented restrictive voter identification laws, closed polling places, and shortened early voting periods. In Pennsylvania, at least eight laws that would restrict voting access have been introduced including a call for stricter voter identification requirements, in-person early voting, signature verification of mail ballots, and other major changes. Meanwhile the Democrats in the U.S. House passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and HR 1, the For The People Act, which may restore lost aspects of the VRA. Both bills are languishing in the Senate. Universal voting rights are eroding ... again.

This time we are all here.