PHOTO/STACEY ABRAMS
When Carter G. Woodson introduced African American History Month in 1926, as Negro History Week, it soon became clear that American history without African American history was a lie of omission. One cannot exist or be understood without the other. It is through the struggle of Black Americans for equality that the real history of the US is revealed.
Black History Month’s 2020 theme of “African Americans and the vote,” illuminates this. It’s the 150th anniversary of black men and 100th anniversary of black women getting the right to vote. It’s also a crucial election year with the impeachment of a president, putting suppression of especially the black voter front and center.
At the birth of the US, voter suppression was legal. Only white men with property were allowed to vote in most states. The 3/5 (per slave) compromise of the 1787 Constitutional Convention gave advantage to slave states in congressional representation and presidential elections. Democracy, freedom and justice? No. The legal and political superstructure conceived at that convention simply built itself around the economics that without the brutal exploitation of the African slave and white supremacy as its justification, there was no cotton and without cotton, no modern industry, expansion of world trade or Industrial Revolution.
This stood until the election of Lincoln. In response the South rebelled and tried to win on the battlefield what it lost at the ballot box. Losing there as well, they resorted to the terrorism of groups like the KKK to rollback Reconstruction gains, especially voting rights, won by former slaves and their white allies who understood … “white labour will never be emancipated so long as black labor is still stigmatized.” Terror like the 1873 Colfax, Louisiana Easter Sunday massacre coupled with the Hayes Tilden agreement (The Great Betrayal) brought reconstruction to an end.
The Jim Crow laws that followed shackled the Black freedmen to sharecropping where they were joined by poor whites. Previous support of slavery and an end to Reconstruction did not save poor whites from generations of poverty alongside blacks. Both were denied voting by every conceivable fashion. When the mechanical cotton picker of the 1940s replaced sharecropping, it destroyed the economic basis of Jim Crow, led to the Great Migration to northern industrial cities and ushered in the civil rights era.
Today, the replacement of industrial workers by computers and robots is nearly complete. The resulting homelessness, unemployment, stagnant wages and lack of healthcare affecting all workers is disproportionately hitting African-Americans.
Trump & company are resurrecting white supremacy to redirect blame onto people of color for society’s woes. Jim Crow style tactics are now restrictive voter IDs, name crosscheck, gerrymandering and scarcity of voting machines. In response, people are uprising all over by joining the electoral process as new candidates and voters. Traditional voters are taking a closer look at Sanders, Warren, Yang, and others for their stances on wealth redistribution. Here the African American voter has been critical in elevating society for new social change.
In the spirit of African American History Month 2020, let us all join the battlefield of the electoral arena armed with the weapon of massive voter registration and inscribed on our banners, “End voter suppression, voting rights for all.”
