Hey You Black Man/​woman, Yes You, Don’t Ever Think You Cannot End Up Picking Cotton Again…

It is remark­able to me that the dog in the fight with the most to lose is the dog that does­n’t want to participate.
Before I tell you what I am yap­ping about (more dog humor).….. No dis­re­spect to my dog Bud.
Let us back up a bit to the fight that African-Americans waged just to earn the right to vote.
The 15th Amendment to the US con­sti­tu­tion grant­ed African-Americans the right to vote. “Slavery is not abol­ished until the Black man has the bal­lot,Frederick Douglass famous­ly said in May 1865, a month after the Union vic­to­ry at Appomattox.

After Abraham Lincoln was assas­si­nat­ed it was up to President Andrew Johnson to recon­struct the Union.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was a Unionist from Tennesse who was a strong state rights believer.
For those of you not pay­ing atten­tion, state rights are cod­ed lan­guage for allow­ing states to do with black peo­ple what they want­ed. (It is a term used still today by Republicans when they want laws that dis­crim­i­nate against African-Americas). Republicans like Ronald Reagan, Patrick Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and most today in the US House and Senate are ardent state’s rights advocates.
Because of Andrew Johnson’s atti­tude to the over four mil­lion new­ly freed African-Americans, the nation embarked at a blis­ter­ing pace, to enact anti-black laws, that were lat­er known as the [black codes].

In Early 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill, which aimed to build on the 13th Amendment and give Black Americans the rights of cit­i­zens, Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. Congress over­rode his veto, mark­ing the first time in the nation’s his­to­ry that major leg­is­la­tion became law over a pres­i­den­tial veto.
In 1867 the peri­od when rad­i­cal recon­struc­tion began, Black Americans vot­ed in huge num­bers across the South, elect­ing a total of 22 Black men to serve in the U.S. Congress (two in the Senate).
Even though Blacks vot­ed in num­bers and were see­ing them­selves rep­re­sent­ed in the Federal Government, local or state pow­er large­ly remained in white hands, much the way it is today. Black offi­cials faced the con­stant threat of intim­i­da­tion and vio­lence, often at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan or oth­er white suprema­cist groups.
Today the Black vote is under con­stant threat from the Republican party.

Because the 15th Amendment left it up to states to decide the spe­cif­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions for suf­frage. Southern state leg­is­la­tures used such qual­i­fi­ca­tions — includ­ing lit­er­a­cy tests, poll tax­es, and oth­er dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices — to dis­en­fran­chise a major­i­ty of Black vot­ers in the decades fol­low­ing Reconstruction. (says History​.com).
Those dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices were exem­pli­fied in the igno­ble statutes in the south­ern states known as Jim Crowe laws.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act out­lawed dis­crim­i­na­tion in schools restau­rants and oth­er pub­lic places but did not address vot­ing rights.
In 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that poll tax­es (which the 24th Amendment had elim­i­nat­ed for fed­er­al elec­tions in 1964) were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for state and local elec­tions as well. (his​to​ry​.com).
As a con­se­quence of these hard-fought-for gains, black vot­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion con­tin­ued to grow.
In 2012, Black vot­er turnout exceed­ed that of white vot­ers for the first time in his­to­ry, as 66.6 per­cent of eli­gi­ble Black vot­ers turned out to help reelect Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American pres­i­dent.

Are you ready for this?
[One year lat­er], In 2013, the Republican major­i­ty on the United States Supreme Court struck down a key pro­vi­sion of the Voting Rights Act, rul­ing 5 – 4 in Shelby v. Holder that it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to require states with a his­to­ry of vot­er dis­crim­i­na­tion to seek fed­er­al approval before chang­ing their elec­tion laws.
The courts insult­ing rea­son­ing for its trans­par­ent attempt to roll back vot­ing rights, was that the racism that exist­ed that neces­si­tat­ed the law does not exist anymore.
Immediately after the deci­sion was hand­ed down, states under Republican rule, embarked on a scorched earth strat­e­gy to lim­it vot­ing rights, if not to exis­ten­tial­ly threat­en it completely.
In a rul­ing in one North Carolina law that was struck down by a fed­er­al judge, the judge remarked in his rul­ing that the law went after African-Americans with sur­gi­cal precision.

The state was not done, it appealed the rul­ing to the supreme court, the supreme court would have been bet­ter served by hear­ing the case and destroy­ing it on its demer­its, instead of doing so, the high court refused to hear the case which effec­tive­ly default­ed the case to the appel­late court’s decision.
African-Americans yearn­ing to catch a break was weary that the Republican high court would reverse the appeals court deci­sion, thank­ful­ly it decid­ed against hear­ing it.
Had the Republican major­i­ty on the Supreme Court left the vot­ing rights Act where it was, by adher­ing to the prin­ci­ple of (stare deci­sis), or let the deci­sion stand, there would be no need to deny hear­ing a mali­cious case of vot­er sup­pres­sion, the case sim­ply would not have pro­gressed that far.

It will for­ev­er be unknown how many Black peo­ple lost their lives, lynched, their prop­er­ties destroyed, los­ing their jobs, suf­fer­ing grave indig­ni­ties sim­ply because they want­ed to exer­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to exer­cise their suffrage.
And while we are at it, let us not for­get the con­sci­en­tious white peo­ple who sac­ri­ficed and even died pro­tect­ing the rights of Black peo­ple to sim­ply vote.
Like every­thing else that every­one takes for grant­ed, African-American patri­ots of the past have had to fight like hell to earn and secure the right to vote.
Exercising the right to vote is the great­est tool that the aver­age per­son has, it allows for self-deter­mi­na­tion and autonomy.
Of course not, there will nev­er be a can­di­date or raft of can­di­dates that total­ly embod­ies all of the things we would like to see done.
However, his­to­ry, like the present, is our best guide to help us deter­mine how that vote is exer­cised. Voting is not a trans­ac­tion­al endeavor.
The idea that a can­di­date must offer stuff for your vote is an insult to those who have bled and died so that you can have that right. While many of you pon­tif­i­cate about not get­ting any­thing for your vote, here is a clue, how about get­ting up off your rear ends and go find a job, then go vote?

I have heard so much about the right to vote con­tex­tu­al­ized in trans­ac­tion­al terms, that I am fed up with this so-called woke cul­ture. A lit­tle bit of knowl­edge is cer­tain­ly dangerous.
Before you try to influ­ence oth­ers, please brush up on your American history.
Freedom is not a one-off affair, every gen­er­a­tion must work like hell to pro­tect the free­doms that many of us take for granted.
In this elec­tion cycle, some skin-folks [with a lit­tle mon­ey] are pledg­ing feal­ty to the sta­tus quo, because of an extra zero in your bank account from an immoral tax cut for the wealthy. It is impor­tant that the rest of us under­stand that we are not Fifty cents, Ice cube, or Kanye West.
Those unlearned rap­pers are yet to learn their his­to­ry, and so they do not under­stand the rea­sons that they are where they are today. For the rest of us, under­stand­ing what’s at stake this cycle is critical.
Don’t ever for one moment believe that you can­not end up right back on the cot­ton plantations.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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