In the view of certain Texans today, these guys (from Company C of the Eighth Texas Cavalry),
had the right idea about voting by African Americans.
Despite the scathing 143-page evisceration of Texas' strict new voter ID law by District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead Saturday for that law to be implemented for this election cycle. That's a hint that when the law's constitutionality is ultimately ruled on, the Court will probably give that the okay, too. Estimates are that as many as 600,000 eligible Texans don't have one of the four IDs accepted as a requirement for casting a ballot: a driver's license, a military identity card, a passport or a gun license.
This isn't the first voter-suppression rodeo in Texas.
Keeping African Americans away from the polls began as soon as Emancipation was announced on Juneteenth (June 19), 1865. The state refused to grant blacks political rights. And a year later, the all-white constitutional convention voted against giving suffrage to blacks, even those who were literate or who had never been slaves. That was followed by the all-white legislature refusing to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and passage of the first Black Codes that constrained African Americans from certain economic pursuits, racial intermarriage, officeholding, jury service and, of course, voting.
But, the Republican convention of 1867 included black delegates, and, even though the Ku Klux Klan and other purveyors of anti-black violence were viciously active, blacks participated in their first statewide vote in 1868, voting in a referendum to hold another constitutional convention. With their white allies, they won that referendum. The convention affirmed some basic rights for African Americans, although not all that they had fought for, and made readmission of Texas to the Union possible in 1870. From then it was downhill.
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Read below the fold as Erika Eichelberger at
Mother Jones tallies some historical Texas voter suppression efforts.
1895: The first all-white primaries begin. In the mid-1890s, Texas legislators pushed a law requiring political parties to hold primaries and allowing those political parties to set racist qualifications for who could participate.
1902: The poll tax. The Legislature added a poll tax to Texas' constitution in 1902, requiring voters to pay a fee to register to vote and to show their receipt of payment in order to cast a ballot. [...]
1922: Texas tries a new type of all-white primary. In 1918, black voters in Texas successfully challenged a nonpartisan all-white primary system in Waco. The state Legislature got around this snag by enacting a law banning blacks from all Democratic primaries. Because the Democratic Party was dominant in the South at the time, the candidate it selected through its primary would inevitably win the general election. Anyone voting in the party's primary had to prove "I am white and I am a Democrat."
1927: Texas tries a third type of all-white primary. After the Supreme Court struck down Texas' all-white Democratic primaries, the Legislature got crafty again, passing a new law that allowed political parties—instead of the state government—to determine who could vote in party primaries. The Texas Democratic Party promptly adopted a resolution that only whites could vote. [...]
1971: The state attempts to keep black students from the ballot box. Once 18-year-olds got the right to vote in 1971, Texas' Waller County became a majority black county. To stave off the wave of new African American votes, county officials fought for years to keep students at the county's mostly black Prairie View A&M University from accessing the polls. [...]
2011: And again. A year later, a three-judge federal court ruled in Texas v. United States that the state's local and congressional redistricting maps showed evidence of deliberate discrimination.
That last was the same year Texas passed its new voter ID law. It was blocked initially under the Voting Rights Act, but the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the VRA in 2013 and state officials acted to implement it. Judge Gonzales blasted it Oct. 9 and issued an injunction blocking its use for this year's election. But the appeals court and then the Supreme Court stayed her ruling.
So here we are. Almost a century and a half since Emancipation was declared and some Texas lawmakers apparently would be more comfortable wearing gray uniforms than business attire.
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