Suit testimony focuses on Blacks’ experiences

LITTLE ROCK — Witnesses testified Tuesday about the impacts of voting laws and the judicial system on Black Arkansans, in the second day of trial in a judicial districting lawsuit that could force the creation of a single majority-minority district for electing justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court and two majority-minority districts for electing state Court of Appeals judges.

In each newly created district, the majority of voters would be Black. The federal bench trial, which so far has had some contentious questions and answers, could last the remainder of the week and partially into next week. The case is being argued before U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Christian Ministerial Alliance, Arkansas Community Institute, former Pulaski County Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey Sr. and Kymara Seals of Jefferson County. The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund as well as private attorneys from New York, Washington, D.C., and Little Rock.

Defendants in the lawsuit are Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Secretary of State John Thurston and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. They comprise the state Board of Apportionment. The defendants are represented by attorneys from Rutledge’s office.

Seals spent the morning testifying about her experiences both in working as an advocate for Black voters in Arkansas and as a consultant for political candidates, and personally as a Black woman growing up in the state. Her first job out of college, she said, was with the office of the 11th Judicial District prosecuting attorney as a victim/ witness coordinator in Jefferson County, where she said she saw first-hand the effects of racism in the judicial system.

“It was my first job out of college and I saw a lot of inequities,” Seals said. “Black men overcharged, intentionally, so they could plea down. I saw bonds being set higher for Black people. I saw the inner workings of the criminal justice system.”

Seals said she got her activism from her parents, both of whom were active in Pine Bluff. Her father was a union member at the local paper mill and her mother a teacher and community activist who she said raised her to pursue a life of public service.

“We were very conscious of our role, our responsibilities,” she said. “We would go out and do voter registration drives at community events, the local churches, and by the time I was 12 or 13 I had my own clipboard.”

Seals said recently passed laws — ostensibly to make voting more secure — placed hurdles in the path of many Black voters and lower-income voters by changing voting locations, voting hours, ID requirements and other measures. In 2020, she said, “we had one of our oldest voting sites disappear from the roster.”

That voting site, New Town Missionary Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, was the subject of a lawsuit in 2020 after the Jefferson County Election Commission ordered it closed without a full vote of the commission. A special judge later ordered it reopened.

“It’s not just happening in Arkansas,” she said. “It’s happening all over the country. It’s very intentional.”

She said although many people consider the Jim Crow era of racial oppression to be a thing of the past, it still exists in different forms.

“Although I didn’t live in Jim Crow as America knows it, in a lot of ways it’s still here,” Seals said. “We’re still there. We may not have to count jellybeans in a jar or pay a poll tax, but there’s another way, through legislation.”

Maxine Allen, a Little Rock minister and member of the Christian Ministerial Alliance, testified that she remembered conversations between her parents during the Jim Crow era regarding poll taxes.

“The poll tax was $2 and my father made $17 a month as a janitor,” Allen said. “I can remember them talking about who was going to go down and vote because they couldn’t afford the $4 for both of them to vote.

“So here we are in 2022,” Allen continued, her voice breaking. “We’re fighting the same fights to have access my parents fought 50 years ago.”

Allen said the importance of diversity in the judicial branch is the sense of justice that seeing Black judges gives to Black people.

“It’s a mighty scary thing to go to court and perhaps the only person who looks like you is the bailiff in the back of the room,” she said. Then, gesturing toward the courtroom, “There’s nobody out there who knows what it’s like to live 72 years in Black skin as a female.”

At one point, Allen chided the defense attorneys from the attorney general’s office.

“I’m not excited about what I see in this courtroom,” she said. “It doesn’t make me believe my concerns are being taken seriously when the attorney general has three white men sitting out there. This is a case about race so wasn’t there a Black file clerk or somebody y’all could bring with you?”

Allen said the lack of opportunities for Black candidates in statewide races, especially judicial races, sends a message to Black voters, herself included.

“It tells me Black voters don’t matter,” she said.

Testimony resumes at 9 a.m. this morning as the plaintiffs continue to present their case.