Yesterday, June 19th, we celebrated America’s newest federal holiday. When Joe Biden signed it into law on Thursday, June 17th, it squeaked into the record books barely 48 hours before festivities were due to kick off. Finally, Americans have red circle on their calendars honoring the day in 1865 when Union soldiers made their way to Galveston, Texas, with a happy errand. Imagine the scene when they got to tell Black people they were now citizens and not chattel property!
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:
“The following year, on June 19, the first official Juneteenth celebrations took place in Texas. The original observances included prayer meetings and the singing of spirituals, and celebrants wore new clothes as a way of representing their newfound freedom. Within a few years, African Americans in other states were celebrating the day as well, making it an annual tradition. Celebrations have continued across the United States into the 21st century and typically include prayer and religious services, speeches, educational events, family gatherings and picnics, and festivals with music, food, and dancing.”
Britannica.com
Well, yes, very nice for some. I bet other people thought this wasn’t happy news at all. After all, Texas had joined the Confederacy in order to preserve slavery. In 1860, the state logged 182,566 slaves, 30 percent of its total population. Texas thus ranked 9th in the nation in terms of the percentage of its population that was enslaved. Plenty of white landowners were pretty angry when Gen. Gordon Granger showed up uninvited with his copy of the Proclamation in hand.
Joy into sawdust
Like its neighbors across the southern tier, Texas went on to undermine and thwart the Emancipation Proclamation. Resentful and angry at the prospect of equality with their former property, white lawmakers enacted laws to disqualify Black people’s access to the ballot box. The guise of “state’s rights” allowed them to disguise their intentions: keeping their Black citizens from full enjoyment of their rights. Perhaps as a sop to Black indignation, Texas allowed Emancipation Day to become an official day of celebration in 1938. But see how carefully the governor’s permission was worded.
Whereas, the Negroes in the State of Texas observe June 19 as the official day for the celebration of Emancipation from slavery; and
Whereas, June 19, 1865, was the date when General Robert [sic] S. Granger, who had command of the Military District of Texas, issued a proclamation notifying the Negroes of Texas that they were free; and
Whereas, since that time, Texas Negroes have observed this day with suitable holiday ceremony, except during such years when the day comes on a Sunday; when the Governor of the State is asked to proclaim the following day as the holiday for State observance by Negroes; and
Whereas, June 19, 1938, this year falls on Sunday; NOW, THEREFORE, I, JAMES V. ALLRED, Governor of the State of Texas, do set aside and proclaim the day of June 20, 1938, as the date for observance of EMANCIPATION DAY
in Texas, and do urge all members of the Negro race in Texas to observe the day in a manner appropriate to its importance to them.
An interlude of hope
One hundred years passed since the end of the Civil War. Once President Johnson signed Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, Southern voter-suppression malarkey waned. Some of the region’s younger people discarded the resentment and anger of their elders and moved on. A handful may even have joined the Democratic party. More did not. If anything, a couple of generation’s worth of identity politics quietly stoked white resentment.
Politicians, preachers, right-leaning broadcasters and polemicists portrayed every gain by Black and brown people as coming at white people’s expense. And as the decades passed, the reach of such grumbling and jealousy grew wider and wider. Powered by Fox News and later the internet, grievance politics crept across the country into states that never saw a single, Black enslaved person.
Modern proverb: It is easier to stir up resentment against some ‘Other’ person than it is to design and promote useful governing policies.
The state of the union in 2021
Apparently, the temptation to rig access to the ballot box has not disappeared once and for all. I say that only because dozens of Republican-led state legislatures, from Florida to Montana, have done their god-damnedest to see to it that minority voters find it hard as hell to cast a ballot. Now, 55 years after the Voting Rights Act became law, we fight the same battles to ensure everyone can vote.
An op-ed in Vox.com summed the two flavors of regressive attacks on the franchise this way:
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of voter suppression laws. Many provisions currently being pushed by Republican state lawmakers make it harder to cast a ballot in a certain way — such as by mailing in the ballot or placing it in a drop box. Or they place unnecessary procedural obstacles in the way of voters. These provisions often serve no purpose other than to make it more difficult to vote, but they also are not insurmountable obstacles.
Other provisions are more virulent. They might disqualify voters for no valid reason. Or allow partisan officials to refuse to certify an election, even if there are no legitimate questions about who won. Or make it so difficult for some voters, who are likely to vote for the party that is out of power, to cast their ballot that it’s nigh impossible for the incumbent party to lose.
There Are Two Kinds of Voter Suppression, Vox.com
It’s tempting to write a thought experiment about this. Just to help voters who elect Republican legislators perhaps reconsider their position.
A very small thought-experiment
Let’s say you live in a state — Domania — that has typically voted blue. Both blue- and red-leaning voters accepted election results, even if they weren’t thrilled. After all, no one ever suggested the non-partisan elections people did dodgy things with the ballot boxes. In recent years, more Republican candidates seem to be winning seats at the table.
Democrats express alarm. “Our liberal beliefs will be drowned in a tide of old-fashioned thoughts,” some say. Suddenly, you hear whispers in coffee shops that Republican candidates are winning because someone rigged voting machines in their favor. Radio and TV chat shows chime in. One claims Republicans picked up random people outside bingo parlors on Saturday afternoons and drove them to the polls. Another said out-of-towners gave people waiting to vote beer in exchange for a promise to vote for Republican candidates. Someone finally pointed out that all the ballot drop-off boxes outside rural post offices made it too easy to vote. Too easy for farmers, wealthy ranchers and notoriously red-leaning retirees living on golf courses, that is…
And so, Democrats decide to redraw Domania’s legislative district lines to prevent Republicans from winning more statehouse seats. So it looked a little funny that electoral district lines zigzagged through suburban neighborhoods: it was in a good cause. Next, they yanked rural ballot boxes because they were unattended and therefore unsecured. So what if it meant farmers had to drive into a city to vote? Finally, Democrats put the kibosh on the bingo parlor/polling station/free ride scam. Drivers could pick up no more than two people per day. And prove they knew anyone getting into their vehicles since 10th grade. So what if that smacked of prejudice against bingo-players? If they were so keen to vote, surely they’d willingly walk two miles to the one remaining polling place.
Sounds barking mad, doesn’t it?
That’s because Democrats, by and large, have proved highly unlikely to try and restrict voting. Broadly, they believe in civic participation and thus prefer more voters than fewer. Their party platforms, in state after state, signal the preference for inclusion of all eligible voters in the franchise. They’re not 100 percent pure of heart — there are cases of retaliatory gerrymandering to promote blue election results. But Democrats have overwhelmingly disdained the path of Republican state legislators who have promoted bill after bill to disenfranchise voters.
Bill Millhiser’s article is worth quoting further, because if those of us who are outraged by attacks on voting access are to fight, we should understand what we’re fighting:
To be clear, the point of drawing a distinction between voter suppression tactics that can be overcome through campaigning and voter education and the sort that can only be overcome through legal means, such as a federal voting rights statute, isn’t to diminish outrage over the first kind of law. An attack on democracy is still an attack on democracy, even if it is ineffective. Rather, the point is that defenders of democracy should be especially vigilant in seeking to defeat the second kind of law using whatever means are available to them.
Emphasis added.
Be ready to campaign for better access to the ballot box. Help your neighbors learn how to register and vote. And fund legal campaigns setting out on the uphill battle of overturning new voter suppression laws wherever they pop up. It’s imperative we pull those vote-choking weeds now, before they overrun the gardens of democracy.
Banner photo by Element5 Digital from Pexels