Thank you for your clarity of writing, research and insights. You are what makes hope that democracy, as opposed to autocracy, can happen. But one of the many things that I found mind blowing to me since researching black Americans historical repression in voting rights and civil rights since that cop murdered George Floyd is wrongly that whole history is portrayed wrongly. The facts in government archives and historical records I read after reading about them, show that whites and blacks received equal voting rights by law after different groups of people banded together politically and overthrew the authority of the British Monarch for a second time. That second time the new laws in this government explicitly gave voting rights to those who participated, negroes and whites. That new government lasted months unfortunately, while the previous attempt to have a government with an autocrat lasted 11 years. But it was the first time explicit rights were equally given in the law. That was in 1676.
The records indicated continual negro voting, and in 1701 and 1703 a “complaint” was sent in from South Carolina that excellent and upstanding negroes were voting (per North Carolina achieves). The issue was political power was not discriminatory (I know, weird right?). It wasn’t until about 14 years later that the government of the colony, serving under the Monarch who had to sign laws into place like our president today, realized finally that they never properly discriminated against these negro voters. So they passed a law segregating “white” freeholders from “negro” freeholders. Under the British laws, all freeholders, who are taxpayers could vote, and there were free holding un-enslaved negroes who had gained their freedom. This struggle went on, with the Virginia legislation banning negro freeholders in 1734 but then the Monarch overturning that law, finding it unconstitutional essentially, in 1740, reinstating negroes in that state.
Such back and forth continued during and after the American Revolution, and by 1804 all states above the Mason-Dixon Line abolished slavery by law and thus all black Americans had equal voting rights. And voted. Of course, some whites in power put up obstacles, but there were always well off and determined and equally intelligent free negroes overcame them to vote. In North Carolina freed negroes could vote 1840. The election in the state legislature was extremely polarized around this hot political issue, and in 1835 the egalitarian “fusionist” party of whites and negroes lost 61 to 66 against the conservative democrats who voted to take the vote away from the negro freeholders, about 10 percent of Black Americans in the state, significant enough to have made a difference (they probably would have won if the white conservative democrats didn’t cheat, as was widely reported in certain counties.). It’s odd, but there has not been a single decade where some black Americans weren’t voting somewhere, usually in multiple states. They continued running for office too, as well as voting, such as in 1895 and 1912 and 1924 with aid of the states five or so black lawyers in South Carolina, to list a few dates. They have never NOT fought for political power and used what they had to vote. This whole idea of the “Civil Rights Movement” being from 1955 to 1965 is bogus. It started almost 350 years ago, not even 250.
The other major problem is the white America First conservative democrats, now conservatives Republicans starting in August 1964. They too never stopped fighting and today strip away voting rights from minorities in 48 states under certain conditions, expanding disenfranchisement from the original 15 or so Jim Crow states. It is now worse than ever. If there is not a national move to restore voting rights for all at all times, then the national will slip completely into autocracy. These think tanks are nothing but obfuscators, They either attack or pretend to defend in such a way that masks over and distracts from the truth. Black Americans, and now Latinos, and even poor whites, are disenfranchised in 48 states. It’s wrong, it’s anti-democracy that has spread from the late 1960s in planning and from 1982 in practice to the rest of the country. When you look narrowly at the last twenty years, you can’t see the complete centuries long struggle and positive contribution Black Americans had in building democracy, not just road and farms under slavery. White conservative and centrist legislators have been eliminating and narrowing history since 1901, and continue to try to make us see a very narrow range of it to control our outrage over their hostility to having a full democracy, and now ever a partial one.
I wish you the best of seeking justice and equality and stand with you. But against conservative autocrats who wrap themselves in the flag to hide their true intentions.
