Black voters still face challenges
Suppression tactics have changed, activists say
SHREVEPORT, La. – As a 21-year-old woman in 1960, Edna Frierson waited in line to take the literacy test African Americans were required to take before they could register to vote. But with each attempt, she was turned away.
“I went to register to vote at the courthouse,” Frierson recalled. “As soon as I would get almost up to them, they would say, ‘We’re closed for today.’ That’s what they would say, so I never took the test.”
The required literacy test was just one of the ways to deter Blacks from voting.
Another obstacle was the poll tax put in place in the 1890s in southern states. A “grandfather clause” excused some poor whites from payment if they had an ancestor who voted before the Civil War, but there were no exemptions for African Americans, according to historical accounts.
Frierson, like other women, did not gain the right to vote until 1920.
More than a half-million Black men became voters in the South during the 1870s, according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, a non-profit, nonpartisan, community-based organization dedicated to educating youth about the importance of civic participation in a democratic society.
When poll taxes and literacy tests did not stop African Americans from registering and voting, various forms of intimidation were used by whites who did not want them to exercise their right to vote.
A Black man attempting to exercise his right to vote was often threatened with losing his job, denial of credit, eviction and verbal abuse by white voting clerks. Mob violence and lynching kept Black citizens from voting, according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation.
John F. Kennedy was the first president Frierson cast a vote for in 1960.
“I was living in the Cooper Road area and what I remember is going to the schools and voting. I don’t remember having any problems going to vote because they had it in my area.”
Frierson’s other, perhaps most memorable vote was cast for this country’s first Black president, Barack Obama.
“I voted for him and it was the first time I ever went to see a president,” Frierson said, recalling the excitement around Obama’s election. “I went to his inauguration because I never thought I would live to see a Black president so I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”
Frierson’s message to young African Americans, “You need to vote because if you don’t vote, you don’t have a voice. If somebody died for you to be able to go and cast a vote you should vote.”
Today’s challenges
Voter suppression efforts range from voter ID laws, cuts to early voting and mass purges of voter rolls.
Communities particularly susceptible to suppression – and in some cases, outright targeted – are people of color, students, the elderly, and those with disabilities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Now 80, Frierson said she would like to vote in person, but because of her age and the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, she’ll use a mail-in ballot to cast her vote in the November elections.
Frierson has already called the registrar’s office to request a mail-in ballot application which she received and filled out.
Concerns about facing the threat of COVID-19 to vote in person resulted in a federal lawsuit, filed by two Baton Rouge voters who asked the federal court to stop Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin from using an emergency election plan that limited the use of mail-in ballots.
In a 44-page decision released Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ruled that Louisiana should allow more access to absentee mail ballots for the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Low number of early voting sites
Dale Sibley, Caddo Parish Registrar of Voters in Louisiana, said state statutes authorize him to add one additional branch location for early voting.
“By law, early voting has to take place in the Registrar’s Office,” Sibley said. “That site is the only early voting site in Caddo Parish.”
With just the one site, lines form out onto the sidewalk leaving voters vulnerable to the elements.
“There are some who feel this location is an impediment,” Sibley said.
The Caddo Parish Commission’s effort to establish an additional site fell short and will not happen this year, Sibley said, adding there is an effort on the Caddo Commission’s part to go forward to reach an agreement on a site as well as calling on the legislature to allow for multiple, additional sites.
“We are funded by the parish,” Sibley said. “My position has been, unless the parish commission agrees on an additional location, I will not establish an additional location because everybody wants it in their neighborhood, but we can only have one.”
When asked whether one early voting site is an impediment, Sibley said he can’t say definitively if it is or not.
“I’m very interested and motivated to see that everybody exercises their right to vote and any impediments to that, then we’re going to work to remove,” Sibley said. “If you look at the numbers of people who have early voted, traditionally it hasn’t been a huge number like mail-in voting.”
Mail-in voting
When Sibley first arrived last October, the registrar of voters had the largest number of mail-in ballot requests to the tune of 6,000 and received back about 4,000 ballots.
“This year, we’re already close to 15,000 requests,” Sibley said. Statewide, that number is at about 156,000 requests. Normally, that statewide request is about 60,000.
The big driver of the spike in numbers, Sibley said, is COVID-19.
As for the national talk about mailvoting, Sibley said there’s a lot of confusing information out there.
The number of ballots the registrar’s office receives from the state, directly correlates with the number of requests they get. Each request and ballot is accounted for, Sibley said.
“I think we’re up to about 15,000 requests as opposed to the 4,000 to 6,000 in prior years,” he said.