One Person, No Vote

One Person, No Vote

Adult nonfiction
"Virginia representative Carter Glass, like so many others,
swooned at the thought of bringing the Mississippi plan to his own
state, especially after he saw how well it had worked. He rushed to
champion a bill in the legislature that would 'eliminate the darkey as
a political factor...in less than five years.' Glass, whom President
Franklin Roosevelt would one day describe as an 'unreconstructed
rebel,' planned not to 'deprive a single white man of the ballot, but
[to] inevitably cut from the existing electorate four-fifths of the
Negro voters' in Virginia." (Anderson, 2018, p. 3).
You surely must have heard the saying that those who don't learn
from history are doomed to repeat it. Although it contains much more
than a grain of truth, it seems to carry a dangerous assumption: that
awareness of the evils of the past will cause people to want to
prevent them in the present and future. It doesn't take into account
the multitudes who want nothing more than to perpetrate these evils
from what they consider the good old days. Nowhere is this more
evident than in Carol Anderson's One Person, No Vote: How Voter
Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy.
The suppression of the black vote goes back to the period after
the South lost the Civil War. A lot of powerful whites were irate at
the thought of blacks, whom they considered ignorant, childlike,
genetically inferior, and often not quite human, voting and (heaven
forbid!) becoming elected to office and given authority over their
"superiors." That was back in the days leading up to and during the
time when the very popular film, Birth Of A Nation, portrayed the KKK
as the knightly defenders of frail Southern womanhood against the
vicious, primitive Negro. Mr. Glass was doing his bill championing in
1890.
The Klan did their bit, with their hooded night rides, cross
burnings, violence, and threats of violence, to keep blacks from
registering to vote. Laws and their enforcers also did their part to
ensure that the voting population was "confined to those, and those
alone, who were qualified by intelligence and character for the proper
and patriotic exercise of this great franchise (Anderson, 2018, p. 4).
There was a literacy test that was administered to blacks, but not
whites. Not only was the education of black children grossly
underfunded, but my grad school classmates and I would fail those
tests. Do you know how many bubbles there are in a bar of soap? Then
there was the poll tax at a time when many black families were
impoverished sharecroppers. Primaries were whites only affairs.
Fast forward to today. A lot of people were outraged by having
a black president and determined not to have that happen again. Since
a goal of keeping blacks from voting has become less socially
acceptable, the spectre of voter fraud is pushed. Deceased people
rising from the grave on election day, votes being cast in the names
of dogs and cats, and other largely nonexistent shenanigans are seen
as justification for draconian laws which disproportionately effect
minorities. A requirement of a restricted range of picture IDs leaves
those unable to get them unable to vote. In a voter roll purge,
justified by the avowed intent of keeping rolls up to date, thousands
can be disenfranchised at once. The convoluted shapes of
gerrymandered districts give white votes more weight than black
votes. And cutting the number of motor vehicle registries and places
open for early voting in majority black areas can make it impossible
for people to get to the right place at the right time.
Anderson spells out this whole sordid history and its
implications for the future of our republic. If you suspect that all
is not right about the way America allocates the most fundamental
Constitutional right but not sure what exactly is going on, you'll
find One Person, No Vote to be a must read.
Beware not only those amnesiac about history, but those working
nonstop to turn back the hands of time.
On a personal note, I had a good week. It's much warmer than last
week: temps up in the 30s and 40s have some people breaking out the
shorts. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. I got off work. My
older daughter and her fiancée are throwing a birthday party for
Eugene and Adam. I'll get to see all three of my kids for the first
time since Christmas!
A great big shout out goes out to my amazing family including, of
course, good Joey Cat.
jules hathaway



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