by Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden
Hennepin County Library hardcover 223 pages plus index and notes
Published: 2019
Genre: Non-fiction, voting, history, Civil Rights
I don't remember how this was recommended to me, but it was both fascinating and disheartening. It is very well-researched and well-written, geared to teenagers, and so very accessible to all readers.
From the jacket: "The milestone election of President Barack Obama should have been a signal of racial progress. But in the aftermath of this victory, a movement has emerged that threatens a cornerstone of democracy: the promise that each vote counts. When a 2013 US Supreme Court decision undid the protections offered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the floodgates opened to voter suppression on a whole new scale. From photo ID requirements to gerrymandering and poll closures, this book explores the ways that racist political maneuverings work to limit voting rights - and the ways that activists are fighting to restore them."
So you can tell the political perspective from that. I'm a little curious to read a book written from the opposite perspective, but politics isn't my favorite topic. It was interesting that the authors never addressed the issues of gerrymandering by the democrats . . . I'm pretty sure that one is a two-way street. In any case, I learned a lot reading this.
Page 31 on Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 and how the rest of the world viewed us:
"Henry Cabot Lodge, US ambassador to the United Nations, wrote President Dwight Eisenhower that at the UN he could 'see clearly the harm that [Little Rock is] doing . . . More than two-thirds of the world is non-white and the reactions of [their] representatives is easy to see.'
The Times of India ran a front-page story titled, 'Armed Men Cordon Off White School: Racial Desegregation in Arkansas Prevented.' Similar articles dominated the news in Egypt, Tanganyika, and elsewhere."
Sometimes as Americans, I think we are culturally egocentric. It makes me sad. I was also surprised (but why) and saddened by how long some of these issues have been stewing and brewing. Current issues are not new! Page 47 brought Jeff Sessions into play in response to the work of Albert Turner Sr. and his wife to help black residents with voting.
Turner went to the Alabama attorney general's office for training sessions and then began to apply that knowledge in Perry and surrounding counties. Not surprisingly, Election Day 1982 brought a very different result. Blacks won positions on the school boards and county commissions.
The Perry County distict attorney cried foul! He was convinced that Turner and company had committed fraud. The DA quickly informed US attorney Jeff Sessions, who hated the VRA, considering it a meddling piece of legislation.
When the next primary rolled around in 1984, Sessions had the FBI tail the Turners and Stephen Hogue. (The rest of this is below - pages 48 and 49.)
Page 74 / 75 on the 2000 election in Missouri - "By the time every one of Bond's three hundred plus claims was investigated, it was clear that out of 2.3 million voters in Missouri, the four people who committed some type of malfeasance at the polls hardly constituted rampant voter fraud. And it was also obvious that 'none of these problems could have been resolved by requiring photo ID at the polls.' Yet, from the tattered cloths of bureaucratic snafus, administrative incompetence, and typographical errors, the lie of rampant vote fraud hung there, dangling, as the senator kept fashioning democracy's noose."
FOUR people! Seriously? That time, money, and energy was primarily spent to send a message to black people that they shouldn't vote?
Page 109 . . . "Kemp actually launched a criminal inquiry into the registration of 85,000 new voters, 'many of them minorities,' continued Wines, but 'found problems with only 25 of the registrants.' And here's the kicker. After all the time, money, and publicity, 'no charges were filed.'
Yet the intimidation was real - too real and too familiar for black folks."
On pages 115-116, the authors relate a story about Kris Kobach as secretary of state in Kansas in 2010. Ugh. It's hard for me to read example after example of how people who are supposed to uphold the law actually use it as a weapon against people they don't respect.
"Once he was elected secretary of state, Kobach's first battle cry was a menacing thrust at the voter fraud that had purportedly engulfed Kansas. As 'Exhibit A,' he pointed to a case where a man named Albert Brewer, who had been dead for years, showed up and voted in the previous primary election. Kobach held up this instance as one of thousands lurking in the voter rolls, skewing elections and canceling out legitimate votes from hardworking, honest Americans. It was vintage Kobach, vintage GOP. It was also not true.
Yes, there was an Albert Brewer who had died. And there was one who voted. But they were not one and the same person. The Albert Brewer who voted - Albert Brewer Jr. - was the son of the man who had died. Kobach hadn't even bothered to check before he started slinging accusations.
Page 141 - "Similarly, the Electoral Integrity Project, based at the University of Sydney in Australia and at Harvard University in the United States, using a number of benchmarks and measurements, was stunned to find that when it applied those same calculations in the United States as it had in Cuba, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone, North Carolina was 'no longer considered to be a fully functioning democracy.' Indeed, if it were an independent nation, North Carolina would rank somewhere between Iran and Venezuela."
This book was hard for me to read and made me kind of sad . . . but I'm glad I read it. My mom was passionate about being involved in the political process. Being informed, voting, helping others to vote. Suppression tactics don't make our democracy stronger. We should want all eligible voters to cast their vote, even if they don't agree with us. (Hard pill to swallow, but that's what a democracy is supposed to be about!)
Oh! I love that the author ends the book with suggestions to young people on how to be involved in the political process! Page 223 has a list of ways to get involved in your own community: register, help other voters, research, volunteer. Good stuff!
