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 Let's Talk
Denise Rolark Barnes
Columnist Page
Friday, February 18, 2005; Page 16
Panic Over Voting Rights Act is Warranted
President George W. Bush, unfortunately, is not alone when it comes to his lack of knowledge of the Voting Rights Act and the impact it has had on protecting the right to vote for African Americans over the past 40 years. However, his self-proclaimed ignorance about what has been called one of the most significant pieces of civil rights legislation in the history of America is yet another reason why the “urban legend” – that Blacks will lose voting rights protection if the act is not renewed – lives on.
For the past 40 years, Black elected officials have continued to wave a red flag in front of the faces of their colleagues in Congress and the President of the United States to make sure that the Voting Rights Act is strengthened and reauthorized, fearing that a failure to do so will once again disenfranchise an entire race of people and enable evildoers who would attempt to obstruct the rights of Black voters to succeed in their efforts.
At a recent meeting Bush held with members of the Congressional Black Caucus – his first encounter with the 43-member legislative body since entering the White House four years ago– Bush was asked whether he supported the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. His comments shocked nearly the entire delegation who recalled the president saying that he was “unfamiliar” with the Act.
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. was, reportedly, the one who asked Bush if he would re-authorize the portion of the bill that must be approved every 25 years. He called Bush’s response “unbelievable.”
At the recent memorial service for Student Non-Violent Coordinating Council (SNCC) executive director James Forman, who died last month, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton shared the President’s remarks with the vast group of voting rights warriors who gathered to reminisce over the violent and tumultuous era of the early 1960s. The graying comrades reflected on Freedom Summer when they, as students, invaded the South by the busloads to register Black voters and to offer protection at the polls during election time. They also mourned the loss of many young workers including James Cheney, a native of Mississippi who, along with Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two Jewish young men from New York, who were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964, where they were helping to register Blacks.
Was George W. Bush, the student at Yale University, who graduated in 1968, partying so hard that he missed what young Blacks, Whites, Christians and Jews were doing to make it possible for even him to get elected president?
Twice, sections of the Voting Rights Act were amended and extended for five years, in 1970 and seven years, in 1975, to address the way voting electorates were manipulated through gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large elections, and other structural changes to prevent newly-registered Black voters from effectively using the ballot, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1982, Congress renewed special provisions of the Act, which were covered for 25 years. The time to reauthorize the Act, with all of its amendments, is on the horizon.
Clearly, most Black elected officials and voters, now joined by their Latino counterparts, are anxious to confirm that the Voting Rights Act will be reauthorized. Ever since 1998, rumors have circulated that the right to vote for African Americans will expire in 2007. The word has circulated throughout the Internet and been discussed on the Tom Joyner Morning Show.
It is a fact that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution is permanent and protects the right of all Americans to vote, regardless of race. And it is a fact that termination of the Voting Rights Act will not terminate the rights to vote granted under the Fifteenth Amendment. However, residents of Florida and Ohio, among other states and jurisdictions within the states, will not rest comfortably until the signature of President Bush joins the signatures of President Lyndon B. Johnson and President Ronald Reagan to assure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their voting rights are protected.
Justice Department officials concur with voting right’s advocates that: “Although the legacies of racially polarized voting and discriminatory voting practices have not vanished, the Voting Rights Act has dramatically curtailed their effect.”
For Denise Rolark Barnes send email to drbarnes@washingtoninformer.com |
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