Chen Fang
November 22, 2012
Ms. Chocos
ESL100 D/E
Black Voting Rights
Hundreds years ago, the first Americans revolutionists fought to get rid of the
governing of Britain and formed an organization encourages and protects freedom: The
Government of the United States. As a foundation of the founding of America, The
Declaration of Independence gives equality to American citizens, and Thomas Jefferson’s
central point, all men are born equal, also sustain in the constitution. However, slavery
was not abolished immediately for some reason. The top class in the society did not
abolish slavery because it was how they made the majority of their money. The founders
of the country cannot imagine, the decision made the racial problem remains hundreds
of years. As Edwards Kearny writes in her article “Government and Politics in the United
State”, “Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an
intolerable one.”(128) Even if for the whites, government is not always good; the blacks
are suffering the government all the time until 1960s, when the things took a change for
better. The changing of black people’s voting right reflects the process of the
development of equality in the United States.
Because of the remaining of slavery institution, blacks are always considered to be
property by white Americans. Once the considering became a social value and general
thought, anyone is impossible to change and abandon it, even is the constitution. They
are not considered to deserve any human rights, even the voting rights, which rights is
much more important than people imagined. Voting rights have the power to change
the lives of a whole social class, the voters have the rights to choose representatives
who cares about them and speak and act for them in the government. Joey R. Weedon
mentions in his article “Voting rights restored”, “The U.S. Constitution did not include
any specific provisions on voting rights until the adoption of the 15th Amendment in
1870.” 5 years after the abolition of slavery institution in 1865, the government finally
realized to equalize blacks’ voting rights by fixing the constitution. But the change of
constitution didn’t change people’s value. The white man didn't want them to vote
because they still felt they were less of a person.
Cultural slavery still remained. The magazine Salmagundi says “Even after the
abolition of slavery, a cultural slavery persisted. The distinctive feature of cultural slavery
is that it deals with a group of people in corporate terms and discriminates in collective
terms. It's not blacks who started that particular process; it's the civilization which went
against one of its fundamental tenets by treating a group collectively. This is where the
tragedy began.” The tragedy not only exists in the racial issues, but also has become a
national disease. And the reason why it is difficult to heal is that the path of civilization
development had been apart from the founder’s plan, and is running counter. So even if
this amendment provided, specifically, that the right to vote shall not be denied or
abridged on the basis of race and color, “several states soon turned to less direct
methods to disenfranchise populations, including poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of
‘good character’ and disqualification for ‘crimes of moral turpitude.’” Poll taxes
prevented the black people who had a difficulty on economy from voting; literacy tests
stopped the blacks who didn’t have chance to be well educated; the latter ones are even
more subjective. In addition, states government also changed the voting time frequently
and hoped that the blacks would miss. The states governors used a variety of method to
invalidate blacks’ voting rights which betrays the belief of the American’s founders, and
the individual freedom was not well protected. The worse is that the primer court
tolerated these tricks that disenfranchise African citizens and prevented the federal
government from intervening. Black people suffered a lot but they are too weak to go
against the general discrimination, and also the powerful government.
The disenfranchisement continued until 1960s, around when the African Americans
started fighting for their voting rights. The civil rights movement organizations make
attempt for the black’s voting registrations in 1950s. The NAACP, short for National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, members started education project
to face the literacy tests, and they paid for their poll taxes to help them overcome
economic interferes. But they were not the biggest problems. NAACP member Robert
Moses writes in his article “Mississippi: 1961-1962”, “…we went around house-to-house,
door-to-door in the hot sun every day because the most important thing was to
convince the local town people that we were people who were responsible.” As has
been politically abandoned for decades of years, African Americans have already
forgotten their responsibility as the US citizens. So the urgent thing the organizations
members have to do is get them out of the room. At the same time, several protests
happened all over the country. The most famous ones such as the marches led by Martin
Luther King in Alabama and his famous lecture “I have a dream” made in Washington
D.C in 1963. “We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a
Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied,
and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a
mighty stream.” Martin Luther King’s speech is powerful and impressive. His words are
always direct and pithily. He said people wouldn’t satisfied if blacks cannot vote, which is
given as the last example in the speech after the prohibited by the motels and highways,
limit of basic mobility and the selfhood stripped of children. The “from least to most
important” sequence put the Voting rights last, to be considered as the most important
right which has been deprived from black people. African Americans’ marches and sit-ins
over the country shocked white society. Result finally came out in 1964 and 1965. As the
most significant affairs in civil rights movement, the signs of Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
Voting Rights Act of 1965 provide powerful protection for black people’s voting rights.
They enforce the 15th Amendment, which has already been exist for hundred years but
was resisted and invalidate by white society; and they prohibit literacy tests nationwide
and focused on areas that most discriminated against voters. They give the federal
government the right to intervene the states government’s decisions to avoid local
discriminations. The suppression of black voting finally ended.
When people doubted if the government would commit it to action, it achieved
results. Kieran Taylor’s article “After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965”
writes that “Federal examiners, some of whom opened offices four days after the Voting
Rights Act’s passage, trained county registrars and cajoled and threatened local officials
to abide by the new law. These officials worked closely with the NAACP, the Voter
Education Project, and a host of locally based civil rights groups who stepped up their
registration campaigns.” The quote conveys the government started to help African
Americans vote and they take responsibility to work with local organizations, which have
enough experience of training but might have a lack of guidance and direction, to
educate the voters more completely and considerately. The authors of “After the Dream:
Black and White Southerners since 1965” also shows the staggering result in the article.
“Black registration in Mississippi jumped from about 7 percent of eligible voters to more
than 60 percent in five years, and African Americans in many sections of the South were
soon voting at similar rates as whites.” The early result are convinced enough to let
people believe in the effective of the acts and government.
In the past fifty years, as a sun-set clause, Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been fix and
amended for many times. Although through these years African American gained a lot
from it, the racial problem is still serious in the US society. Obama, who is an African
American, has been elected again as the “new” president of the United States is inspired.
However, as the one of the most controversial disagreement between Obama and
another candidate Romney, the welfare policy, which is a big issue the new president has
to face and has influenced the election a lot, is caused by African Americans’ difficulty in
some degree. Edwards Kearny shows in her article “Government and Politics in the
United States” that “The welfare system in the United States has also been troubled by
racial problems that began with racial segregation in the South until the 1960s. Although
American blacks have made significant gains in the last thirty years, many are still unable
to escape from poverty and unemployment. For this reason, a large number of people
who receive welfare benefit are black Americans.”(133) It’s debatable that the majorities
in the welfare system who contribute to it are whites, and they have to work to paid for
the black people who don’t have job. Some critics consider that the African Americans
are over-protected, and their full voting rights provide them, especially the unemployed
black people the chance to vote for the candidate whose policy benefit themselves and
ignore the economy. So black people’s voting rights is still a problem today.
The change of the voting rights of blacks has a great impact on black society, it’s a
symbol of the progress American have made on civil rights and racial equality. And civil
rights, specifically voting rights is a big issue which would never end up discussing,
people have to keep exploring and fixing it to achieve civilization’s improvement, and the
thinking of civil rights is also the merging of multiple races and civilizations.
Work Cited
1. Edwards Kearny, “Government and Politics in the United States”
2. Joey R. Weedon, “Voting rights restored”, Corrections Today. 66.6 (Oct. 2004):
p16.
3. Salmagundi. .104-5 (Fall-Winter 1994): p41.
4. Kieran Taylor, “After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965”,
Journal of Southern History. 78.3 (Aug. 2012): p779.