Arkansas’ turn
Crying wolf? Or crying Crow?
LAST MONTH it was Georgia. Last week it was Arkansas. Reports of Jim Crow sightings keep coming up in the news columns. But, like Bigfoot, until we see a body, we’re going to be skeptical.
Georgia’s legislature has been featured in the national headlines over the last month for what most lawmakers there say is a tightening of the voter rules. Opponents say lawmakers are shifting more power to the legislative branch of that state’s government, and generally making it harder to vote.
The opponents of the newest legislation, who include the president of the United States, have declared a new day of Jim Crow in Georgia. Which isn’t true. Not by any measure.
Now comes a couple of bills in the Arkansas legislature. A few members of the General Assembly have introduced legislation they say will “increase election integrity.” We’ll see, as more details come.
One bill would ban the distribution of unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters by election officials. Another would give the state Board of Election Commissioners more work to do, as far as handling complaints—and more power. There are proposed rule changes that would require checking signatures. As these bills work their way through the legislative process, doubtless there will be more amendments voted on, changes made, opinions cast.
Speaking of opinions, this was in the story Friday: “Rep. Fred Love (D-Little Rock) spoke against HB1803, arguing that the bills use the ‘Jim Crow handbook’ to prevent people from voting.” No, they don’t.
From the top:
Jim Crow was government-sponsored, government-regulated, government-sanctioned racism in the South after the Civil War and before the civil rights bills passed Congress in the 1960s. Some states required poll taxes so only those with means could vote. And they also required literacy tests before a body could register—but illiterate white people were allowed to skip that because of “grandfather” laws. (If your grandfather could vote, so could you. Which seemed to affect Americans whose ancestors were slaves.)
Jim Crow was so powerful that it drove Black residents from politics altogether. In some states, whole decades went by without one Black voter on the registered rolls. And those who didn’t vote, couldn’t serve on juries. Or run for office.
This was a contemptible time in our shared history. But we did overcome.
Whatever political back-and-forth that goes on in the Georgia or Arkansas legislatures, whatever the political parties do to try to gain leverage over the other (hasn’t that always been the case?), whatever shifts are made in the rules of identification, deadlines and jurisdiction, what this isn’t is Jim Crow.
Those who make the case that it is only diminish the severity of the rotten system that was the real Jim Crow. And the people who fought to send him packing.