I recently visited Appomattox, the site of the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has now turned that event on its head. Citing the “progress” in racial justice over the last half century, Justice Alito and the rest of the Trump justices surrendered the Voting Rights Act to the New Confederacy.
In the years following the end of the Civil War, federal troops occupied the South to enforce the voting rights of the formerly enslaved Black population. That resulted in the election of Black senators and congressmen while many white voters were disenfranchised as unreconstructed Confederates. Once those troops were withdrawn, Black political life ended in violence and the Jim Crow laws.
The New Confederacy is about to once again monopolize white power in the states that fomented armed rebellion against the United States government in 1861. A quick look at the map displayed yesterday in the New York Times shows the blue districts drawn to empower Black voters in Memphis, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and other states turning bright red in the years to come as a result of this judicial betrayal. We are moving ever closer to the lines drawn for that fight 160 years ago.
We are witnessing a retreat from one man, one vote. Take Louisiana for example. Fully one third of the population of Louisiana identifies as Black and they currently hold two of the six congressional seats. With this ruling, it is likely that Black voters will control only one seat in Congress. I can do math. One-sixth is less than one-third.
But it’s not just the Supreme Court, although they are working overtime to bring us back to the 1950s. State legislatures across the Old South are salivating about the prospect of bringing back impediments to Black voters like the poll taxes and literacy tests of days gone by. Only this time they will take the form of citizenship verification. Only 50% of all Americans possess a passport and the numbers are lower for Black voters. Birth certificates? Oh sure. Just stand in line at the health department in a state capital and wait weeks for it to arrive. No sweat!
Even our president is doing his very best Jefferson Davis impersonation. When he isn’t threatening to destroy civilization in other countries, he weighs in on how terribly unfair to white people the Civil Rights Act has been. Congress, as usual, is silent, other than Lindsey Graham who is waving his Little Mermaid bubble wand at protesters and sounding like Simon Legree from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Four hundred thousand Union soldiers including many of your ancestors fought and died for a new birth of freedom. Civil rights marchers were bloodied by clubs, bitten by police dogs, and murdered for the right to vote.
Don’t let their sacrifice be in vain. Organize and vote.
David Parrella lives in Buckland.