Black voting rights

“ First, the majority's decision is not predicated upon any actual discrimination against voters by the city of Canton, but merely upon a failure to seek federal approval for de minimis changes in its election machinery. The majority does not pretend that any actual discrimination has been proved in this case. Citations to the finding of the United States Civil Rights Commission about past instances of racial discrimination and to statements made by Congressmen who supported the 1965 Voting Rights Act do not prove discrimination in this case. ”

“ Strict voting eligibility laws blocked nearly 16 percent of Mississippi's Black voting-age population from casting a ballot. Mississippi has one of the highest concentrations of Black people in the country, yet has not elected a Black person to statewide office in well over a century, reported The Guardian on its website in an article entitled "The racist 1890 law that's still blocking thousands of Black Americans from voting" on Jan. ”

“ I do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an ignorant and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black man in the same condition from voting. Such a law is not only unjust, but it will react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of such a law is to encourage the Negro to secure education and property, and at the same time it encourages the white man to remain in ignorance and poverty. I believe that in time, through the operation of intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the ballot-box in the South will cease. ”

“ In short, the Constitution allotted to the States the power to make laws regarding national elections, but provided that, if Congress became dissatisfied with the state laws, Congress could alter them. [5] A newly created national government could hardly have been expected to survive without the ultimate power to rule itself and to fill its offices under its own laws. The Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, now before this Court, [p124] evidence dissatisfaction of Congress with the voting age set by many of the States for national elections. ”

“ Nor can the majority support its unprecedented decision on the grounds of racial discrimination. It is beyond my comprehension how the change from wards to an at-large election can discriminate against Negroes on account of their race in a city that has an absolute majority of Negro voters.
One vice of § 5 is that it attempts to shortcut the Federal Government's job in policing racial discrimination in voting by radically curtailing the power of certain States to conduct their own elections while leaving other States wholly free of any such restraint. ”

“ Since Congress has attempted to invade an area preserved to the States by the Constitution without a foundation for enforcing the Civil War Amendments' ban on racial discrimination, I would hold that Congress has exceeded its powers in attempting to lower the voting age in state and local elections. On the other hand, where Congress legislates in a domain not exclusively reserved by the Constitution to the States, its enforcement power need not be tied so closely to the goal of eliminating discrimination on account of race. ”

“ To retain that principle in the Constitution after the abolition of slavery would make the conditions still worse. For then representation would be based upon not merely three-fifths but the whole number of negroes in the former slave states, while the right to vote would be enjoyed by only the whites. Thus in a state in which half the population was black, each white voter would have two or three times the voting power of one in a state where there were few or no blacks. ”

“ One ground upon which the majority of the District Court dismissed the Government's complaint was that the United States is without authority, absent the clearest possible congressional authorization, to bring an action like this one which challenges the validity of state laws allegedly used as devices to keep Negroes from voting on account of their race. ”

“ Thus it easily happened that more and more the better class of Negroes followed the advice from abroad and the pressure from home, and took no further interest in politics, leaving to the careless and the venal of their race the exercise of their rights as voters. The black vote that still remained was not trained and educated, but further debauched by open and unblushing bribery, or force and fraud; until the Negro voter was thoroughly inoculated with the idea that politics was a method of private gain by disreputable means. ”

“ Certainly there is nothing in 5 which suggests that black voters could or should be given a disproportionately high share of the voting power in a postannexation community; where the racial composition of an annexed area is substantially different from that of the annexing area, it may well be impossible to protect preannexation black voting strength without invidiously diluting the voting strength of other racial groups in the community. ”

“ The 2018 midterm and 2020 general elections provide further evidence that systemic voter discrimination and intimidation continues to occur in communities of color and Tribal lands across the country, making it clear that democracy reform cannot be achieved until Congress restores key provisions of the Voting Rights Act and passes additional protections. ”

“ Then there is one other consideration which must not be overlooked: it is the common opinion of almost every black man and almost every white man that nearly everybody who has had anything to do with the making of laws bearing upon the protection of the [Pg 320] negro's vote has proceeded on the theory that all the black men for all time are going to vote the Republican ticket, and that all the white men in the South are going to vote the Democratic ticket; in a word, all seemed to have taken it for granted that the two races are always going to oppose each other in their voting. ”

“ For a large part of our nation's history, racial minorities have been prevented from voting because of barriers such as literacy tests, poll taxes and property requirements. We've come a long way. That was clear a few weeks ago when Democrats and Republicans, members of the Senate and the House stood on the Capitol steps to announce the introduction of a bill to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. That rare and refreshing display of bipartisanship reflects our collective belief that more needs to be done to remove barriers to voting. ”

“ They are potent in allaying the race feeling aggravated by too many of us, through voting under the leadership of scheming politicians who are opposed to the best interests of the masters of the Southern soil, and who have no use for black men except on election day. In the matter of suffrage, I would suggest that the black voter place himself in touch with his white neighbors. The interests of each are identical. It is of far greater importance to the Negro to have the friendship, respect and confidence of his next-door neighbor than who shall be President of the United States. ”

“ And finally, now, to-day, when we are awakening to the fact that the perpetuity of republican institutions on this continent depends on the purification of the ballot, the civic training of voters, and the raising of voting to the plane of a solemn duty which a patriotic citizen neglects to his peril and to the peril of his children’s children,—in this day, when we are striving for a renaissance of civic virtue, what are we going to say to the black voter of the South? Are we going to tell him still that politics is a disreputable and useless form of human activity? ”

“ The Negroes of our State comprise only 40 percent of the population. If they voted to the extent of almost one-fourth of all the votes cast in that election—and they probably voted more, because they admitted they cast that many—think it is indicative that the Negroes are voting in large numbers. Of course, they are not so well qualified to vote as are the White people. I do not know of a Negro in South Carolina who is qualified and wants to vote who is denied that privilege. So Negroes are voting in my State. ”

“ The first-named wishes to secure the supremacy of a race by preventing the negroes from voting, while the "News" thinks it a better policy to adopt measures for the control of their votes. The "News" is no more friendly to the colored men than its contemporary, and the policy it proposes is as dangerous to their rights, as that of those who, in an outspoken manner, tell the negroes they are entitled to no political privileges. ”

“ The white primary system had been so effective in barring Negroes from voting that the 'interpretation test' as a disfranching devise had been ignored over the years. Many registrars continued to ignore it after 1944, and in the next dozen years the proportion of registered votes who were Negroes rose from two-tenths of one percent to approximately 15% by March 1956. This fact, coupled with this Court's 1954 invalidation of laws requiring school segregation, [7] prompted the State to try new devices to keep the white citizens in control. ”

“ The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy. Free and fair elections that reflect the will of the American people must be protected and defended. But many Americans, especially people of color, confront significant obstacles to exercising that fundamental right. These obstacles include difficulties with voter registration, lack of election information, and barriers to access at polling places. For generations, Black voters and other voters of color have faced discriminatory policies and other obstacles that disproportionally affect their communities. ”

“ It is only in the North that the Negro vote has dynamic power. In several of the border states, this vote is at present unhampered, but there is no guarantee of future security. In Mississippi there are 197,936 Negro males of voting age, but this potential vote does not affect the choice of a single official of that state. The black vote of that commonwealth is as completely nullified as the last two amendments had never been appended to our national constitution. ”

“ The legislative committee and the Citizens Councils set up programs, which parish voting registrars were required to attend, to instruct the registrars on how to promote white political control. The committee and the Citizens Councils also began a wholesale challenging of Negro names already on the voting rolls, with the result that thousands of Negroes, but virtually no whites, were purged from the rolls of voters. Beginning in the middle 1950's registrars of at least 21 parishes began to apply the interpretation test. ”

“ From the adoption of the 1921 interpretation test until 1944, the District Court's opinion stated, the percentage of registered voters in Louisiana who were Negroes never exceeded one percent. Prior to 1944 Negro interest in voting in Louisiana had been slight, largely because the State's white primary law kept Negroes from voting in the Democratic Party primary election, the only election that mattered in the political climate of that State. ”

“ Individuals convicted of a Federal offense often have additional barriers to regaining voting rights. (10) State disenfranchisement laws disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities. More than 6 percent of the African-American voting-age population, or 1,800,000 African Americans, are disenfranchised. Currently, 1 of every 16 voting-age African Americans are rendered unable to vote because of felony disenfranchisement, which is a rate more than 3.7 times greater than non-African Americans. ”

“ To discourage the Negro from attempting to exercise the right of the ballot is to belittle him in his own estimation, put him at a serious disadvantage in the estimation of others, and by so much remand him back to the old condition of servitude from which he was rescued at such cost to the nation. Wrong done to the colored race involves the white race in the catastrophe which must follow. To withhold justice is worse than to suffer injustice. A people deprived of their rights by the state will not long be faithful to their duties to the state. ”

“ The argument of peace-loving Northern white men and Negro opportunists that the political power of the Negro having long ago been suppressed by unlawful means, his right to vote is a mere paper right, of no real value, and therefore to be lightly yielded for the sake of a hypothetical harmony, is fatally short-sighted. It is precisely the attitude and essentially the argument which would have surrendered to the South in the sixties, and would have left this country to rot in slavery for another generation. White men do not thus argue concerning their own rights. ”

“ There are States, outside the South, where people of voting age are denied the right to vote—Indians, for example. Negro citizens do vote, under the same rules of eligibilty applied in the case of white citizens ”

“ And yet the evils of that period were due far more to the venality and indifference of white men than to the incapacity of black voters. The revised Southern Constitutions adopted under reconstruction reveal a higher statesmanship than any which preceded or have followed them, and prove that the freed voters could as easily have been led into the paths of civic righteousness as into those of misgovernment. Certain it is that under reconstruction the civil and political rights of all men were more secure in those States than they have ever been since. ”