Blood-soaked history of voting rights in America
Today, barricades still exist in a country under siege
The United States of America was founded on the right to vote. As the British monarchy piled one tax after another upon its North American colony — tea being the most memorable — taxation without representation became the cry. Originally, the American colonists sought not independence from England but representation in the English Parliament: the right to be represented in the English government whose rules they must obey. But let’s not forget, once the war for independence was won, it was white men of property alone who had the privilege of electing George Washington as the first president of the United States.
Fast forward to 1965, in Selma, Ala., a coalition of Black pastors, Black college students, white pastors and others sought the vote for Black citizens who had been denied such a fundamental, constitutional right even though President Abraham Lincoln had abolished slavery in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation and the 15th Amendment in 1870 granted Black men the right to vote. They gathered in Selma to march as one on the statehouse in Montgomery and were bloodily beaten and severely injured for their efforts.
Voting rights in our country have continually had a troubled and often blood-soaked history. For those who were cognizant in those times, none will forget the children blasted with fire hoses in Birmingham, the bombed Sunday School or the terrorizing of the Freedom Riders, met at each stop by a cohort of citizens armed with chains and clubs.
In Mississippi, in the Freedom Summer, there was the drive to register black voters, for which many concerned northerners volunteered. James Cheney, Michael Goodman and Andrew Schwermer stood trembling, alone one summer night beside a dark rural road in Mississippi surrounded by the local Ku Klux Klan, stopped
after leaving the local jail where they had been detained long enough for the Klan to know where they would be on the road once they were released. They murdered them. They died in that Freedom Summer, for offering to work for voter registration of black citizens in Mississippi long denied their constitutional right.
This is a brief account of a few of the chapters in this centuries-long struggle, a long and bloody history of generations in constant conflict with those who would deny them fair representation. It is an old story.
Today, once again, our democracy is under siege by those who would control the voting registers in the name of the preservation of their way of life. Denying the “other” through prejudice, through fear, through ignorance, convinced they are under threat from what they see as unworthy, although legal, citizens.
President Joe Biden is fighting this ancient, uphill battle against those same repressive forces that attempt by any and all means possible to hinder a proper and fair voter representation.
Former President Donald Trump has claimed the recent election he lost was illegally interfered with, and his present intention appears to be an equally illegal counter movement to control the next election. Already we see: Draconian identification rules, severe limitations on voting sites and polls with limited hours and long lines, ridiculous rules disallowing food and drink to those waiting in the long lines; in short, there is a curtailing by any means of the access voting minorities need to effectively be represented.
It would seem that we are back at the barricades once again. It would seem such a basic human right as fair representation in a fair government must be fought for once again. Those who knew the fire hoses and the beatings of the 1960s have not forgotten. It must be our duty to remind, enlighten and warn those who are unaware of this long, bitter history — and of its ultimate consequence.