Teacher fought for decades against efforts to deny black Americans the vote

‘‘I think it is because my foreparents or forefathers didn’t have the opportunity.’’ Rosanell Eaton on what drove her to register so many voters.

Rosanell Eaton Voting rights activist b April 14, 1921 d December 8, 2018

When she first registered to vote, in 1942, Rosanell Eaton rode a muledrawn wagon to the county courthouse in North Carolina where she was greeted by three white men. ‘‘What do you want, little girl?’’ one of them asked Eaton, who was 21 years old.

Upon hearing what business had brought her to the courthouse, one of the men instructed her to recite the preamble to the US Constitution. The challenge was a form of the literacy tests cynically used during the Jim Crow era to prevent blacks from voting.

To the officials’ surprise, Eaton – who has died aged 97 – flawlessly recited the text, with its promises of forming ‘‘a more perfect union’’, establishing justice and securing ‘‘the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity’’.

That test was only the first of the injustices Eaton would endure – and the triumphs she would achieve – as a long unknown but unyielding advocate for voting rights. She came to greatest prominence as a lead plaintiff in a North Carolina lawsuit heard by the US Supreme Court in 2016 and which defeated what many civil-rights activists described as modern-day efforts to disenfranchise blacks and other minority voters with discriminatory practices. President Barack Obama celebrated her amid the legal struggle as an ‘‘unsung’’ American hero.

Eaton, a former teacher who by her count had helped register 4000 people to vote, had seen crosses burned in her yard during her years as an activist. She joined the North Carolina lawsuit in 2013 to protest at a state law that, among other provisions, required prospective voters to present photo identification, barred them from registering the same day they intended to vote, and shortened the early voting period. The measure came on the heels of a US Supreme Court decision substantially weakening the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, remarked that ‘‘common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed’’ required photo identification and said voting regulations should be no less stringent. Opponents of the measure responded that evidence of voter fraud was scant at best, and argued that it would have the effect of obstructing African Americans from voting.

For Eaton, the law created a bureaucratic tangle that she said forced her to make 10 trips to the Division of Motor Vehicles and drive more than 200 miles to various government offices to sort out a discrepancy in the names on her driver’s licence, which used her married name, and her voter registration card, which used her maiden and married names. She also found that her Social Security card had an incorrect birth year. ‘‘It was maybe harder for me to get to vote after the law than it was all the way back then,’’ she said in a

2016 account of her registration efforts.

After an initial legal defeat for the lawsuit, a federal appeals court struck down the law in

2016, recalling ‘‘the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina’’ and condemning the law for targeting ‘‘African Americans with almost surgical precision’’.

It noted that, after requesting data on forms of identification used by voters in the state, legislators had disallowed those types used most frequently by blacks. After a deadlocked ruling the same year, the US Supreme Court declined in 2017 to hear another appeal.

‘‘It’s a cruel irony that the words that set our democracy in motion were used as part of the so-called literacy test designed to deny Rosanell and so many other AfricanAmericans the right to vote,’’ Obama wrote in a letter to the New York Times in 2015, responding to a magazine article that mentioned Eaton and efforts to subvert the Voting Rights Act. ‘‘Yet more than 70 years ago, as she defiantly delivered the preamble to our constitution,’’ he continued, ‘‘Rosanell also reaffirmed its fundamental truth. What makes our country great is not that we are perfect, but that with time, courage and effort, we can become more perfect. What makes America special is our capacity to change.’’

Rosanell Johnson, a granddaughter of slaves and the youngest of seven children, was born on a farm. After her father died when she was 2, her mother became a sharecropper.

In the early years of her life, Eaton farmed for a living. She later did packing work at a plant before taking university classes to become an teacher. She retired at 70, then taught as a substitute teacher and tutored children in her home into her 80s.

Her husband, Golden Eaton, died in 1963, and a son, James, died in infancy. Daughter Annie Montague died in 2000, and son Jesse Eaton in 2004. Survivors include daughter Armenta Eaton, four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Eaton, who had also volunteered for years as a poll worker, was once asked why she devoted so much time to registering others to vote and ensuring that she, too, could cast her ballot. ‘‘I think,’’ she said, ‘‘it is because my foreparents or forefathers didn’t have the opportunity.’’ –