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Suppress the Vote?
By BOB HERBERT
(www.nytimes.com)
The big story out of Florida over the weekend was the tragic
devastation caused by Hurricane Charley. But there's another story from
Florida that deserves our attention.
State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black
voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd
"investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly
volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in
November.
The officers, from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which
reports to Gov. Jeb Bush, say they are investigating allegations of
voter fraud that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March.
Officials refused to discuss details of the investigation, other than
to say that absentee ballots are involved. They said they had no idea
when the investigation might end, and acknowledged that it may continue
right through the presidential election.
"We did a preliminary inquiry into those allegations and then we
concluded that there was enough evidence to follow through with a full
criminal investigation," said Geo Morales, a spokesman for the
Department of Law Enforcement.
The state police officers, armed and in plain clothes, have
questioned dozens of voters in their homes. Some of those questioned
have been volunteers in get-out-the-vote campaigns.
I asked Mr. Morales in a telephone conversation to tell me what
criminal activity had taken place.
"I can't talk about that," he said.
I asked if all the people interrogated were black.
"Well, mainly it was a black neighborhood we were looking at - yes,''
he said.
He also said, "Most of them were elderly."
When I asked why, he said, "That's just the people we selected out of
a random sample to interview."
Back in the bad old days, some decades ago, when Southern whites used
every imaginable form of chicanery to prevent blacks from voting, blacks
often fought back by creating voters leagues, which were organizations
that helped to register, educate and encourage black voters. It became
a tradition that continues in many places, including Florida,
today.
Not surprisingly, many of the elderly black voters who found
themselves face to face with state police officers in Orlando are
members of the Orlando League of Voters, which has been very successful
in mobilizing the city's black vote.
The president of the Orlando League of Voters is Ezzie Thomas, who is
73 years old. With his demonstrated ability to deliver the black vote in
Orlando, Mr. Thomas is a tempting target for supporters of George W.
Bush in a state in which the black vote may well spell the difference
between victory and defeat.
The vile smell of voter suppression is all over this so-called
investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Joseph Egan, an Orlando lawyer who represents Mr. Thomas, said: "The
Voters League has workers who go into the community to do voter
registration, drive people to the polls and help with absentee ballots.
They are elderly women mostly. They get paid like $100 for four or five
months' work, just to offset things like the cost of their gas. They
see this political activity as an important contribution to their
community. Some of the people in the community had never cast a ballot
until the league came to their door and encouraged them to vote."
Now, said Mr. Egan, the fear generated by state police officers going
into people's homes as part of an ongoing criminal investigation related
to voting is threatening to undo much of the good work of the league. He
said, "One woman asked me, 'Am I going to go to jail now because I voted
by absentee ballot?' "
According to Mr. Egan, "People who have voted by absentee ballot for
years are refusing to allow campaign workers to come to their homes.
And volunteers who have participated for years in assisting people,
particularly the elderly or handicapped, are scared and don't want to
risk a criminal investigation."
Florida is a state that's very much in play in the presidential
election, with some polls showing John Kerry in the lead. A
heavy-handed state police investigation that throws a blanket of fear
over thousands of black voters can only help President Bush.
The long and ugly tradition of suppressing the black vote is alive
and thriving in the Sunshine State.
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Past Imperfect: The Road Ahead Of Barack Obama
(africana.com)
But it was not Obama's form so much as it was his content that
catapulted him into the political stratosphere. To many he represented
a new order, a smooth, non-demagogic brand of leadership that has been
advertised as a coming attraction since the decline of the civil rights
movement. Harvard-educated, but with an African name; born and raised in
the heartland, but representing inner city Chicago, Obama was a
pollster's worst nightmare (which is why he was in a prime position to
laugh off the "red states vs. blue states" crowd.)
Even the casual observer could see that the Democratic Party needed
Obama at least as much as he needed them - and perhaps more than he
did. However you slice it the G.O.P. is responsible for the first black
Senator elected after Reconstruction (Edward Brooke in 1966) the first
black National Security Advisor, the first black Secretary of State and
the only black currently seated on the Supreme Court. With Jesse long
past his political expiration date, Ron Brown long deceased, the
Democrats are suffering from a melanin deficiency. And it is this
specific void that has made for the wildly premature discussion of
Obama - who is still just a state legislator - as the Party's first
black presidential nominee.
The specific brilliance of the Obama speech was that it allowed each
of the fragmented constituencies of the Democratic Party to leave the
Fleet Center with the belief that, at his core, Obama represented their
specific interests. Even his most widely quoted statements don't place
him neatly in the either the centrist or liberal wing of the Party:
"Go into the collar counties around Chicago and the people will tell
you they don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the
Pentagon. Go into any inner city neighborhood and folks will tell you
that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents
have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their
expectations and turn of the television sets and eradicate the slander
that says a black youth with a book is acting white."
As a political statement, this is deft, savvy and intelligent, but as
a political blueprint, it's far trickier to pull off. And this is the
where Obama's political talents will most quickly be tested. The racial
realities of America often come down to either/or predicaments and
standing in the middle of the road is the best way to assure that one
is hit by traffic from both directions.
Black leadership has, by necessity, had a long predisposition toward
populism. (Ask yourself where Al Sharpton would be if he conjugated all
his verbs correctly and the answer is this: unemployed.) And the United
States Senate is uniquely challenging forum for black interests. Only
four blacks have served in the Senate since Emancipation (three of them
Republicans) and none has left a track record of significant legislative
achievement or party influence. Prior to 1913, Senators were elected by
state legislatures - not directly by the population of the state they
were to represent. (This explains why there were no black senators
elected after the demise of Reconstruction - when the "Party of
Lincoln" Republicans generally lost interest in the plight of former
slaves.) Still it took more than a half-century for an African American
to be elected after the 17th Amendment provided for direct election of
Senators.
The first black Senator came to office within five years of
Emancipation. Hiram Revels, a former barber and A.M.E. minister who had
organized black regiments during the Civil War, was elected to represent
Mississippi in 1870. Though Revels was elected to serve out the final
year of his predecessor's term, white Senators representing Delaware
and Kentucky challenged his seating. Revels was eventually seated, but
the combination of race and his lame-duck status prevented him from
exerting any significant influence. Four years later, however, Blanche
K. Bruce - a former slave who had studied at Oberlin College - was
elected from Mississippi. Both Revels and Bruce were products of
Southern state legislatures that were influenced by Reconstructionists
and newly-elected black state senators and representatives. But Bruce
did not prove to be any more effective within the halls of the Senate
than his predecessor, failing in his attempts to have pensions paid to
black Civil War veterans and to desegregate the army (the latter would
require a Presidential Executive Order in 1948.) Following the election
of 1876, which signaled the end of Reconstruction, there would not be
another black Senator elected for eighty years.
Edward Brooke was elected as a Republican in a traditionally liberal
Democratic state (Massachusetts) just one year after Lyndon B. Johnson
- a Democrat - had signed the Voting Rights Act and two years after he
had signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Republican or not, Brooke
benefited from both the liberalism of New England voters and the
Democratic legislation of the Civil Rights era. Brooke garnered more
influence than his predecessors (managing to become the only Senator to
be re-elected) and supported full political representation for the
District of Columbia, but lost his bid to retain his seat in 1978.
Carol Mosely-Braun, who was elected from Illinois in 1992 as the
first black woman - and the first black Democratic Senator - might be
most useful in understanding Barack Obama's candidacy. Both Obama and
Mosely-Braun served as state legislators from Chicago - a city that
counts for 80% of the votes in Illinois Democratic primaries.
Mosely-Braun's election owed as much - if not more - to the political
struggles of women as it did to those of African Americans and that
national outrage over how Anita Hill was treated by pro-Clarence Thomas
Senators during his confirmation hearings helped Mosely-Braun galvanize
the Womens' vote. During her tenure, she famously challenged Jesse
Helms and Strom Thurmond on a bill renewing a patent on the Confederate
Flag as well as supporting affirmative action to provide "equal economic
opportunity not just for minorities, but women as well." Still
Mosely-Braun's single-term was marked by questionable expenditures. And
her willingness to lend at least rhetorical support to a death penalty
for adolescents appeared to be a clear attempt to reach out to the
white voters who would support such a measure rather than the African
Americans who would likely be disproportionately impacted by it.
Pundits, party-officals and black people at-large see in Obama a new
voice and a new style in black leadership. But, for what it matters, we
may be premature in declaring the old President-of Black America model
of leadership to be deceased. As long as there are outrageous racial
offenses, as long as African Americans find themselves unfairly
targeted, harassed and even killed by police, in short, as long as
there is overt racism, there will be a niche for a Negro with a
bullhorn. The question is whether or not Obama - or any figure like him
- can maintain black support in the midst of political arena that often
split along racial lines (it should be recalled, for instance, that the
majority of white residents of New York City did not believe that the
police who shot Amadou Diallo 19 times should be brought up on
charges.)
In short, our ancient problems will still confront even new black
leadership.The recent entry of Alan Keyes into the race all but assures
that the next Senator from Illinois will be an African American.
Whatever Keyes' motives (or chances of winning) this is significant.
Consider the fact that there were 82 years between the elections of
Blanche K. Bruce and Edward Brooke and 14 years between Brooke's exit
from the Senate in 1978 and Mosely-Braun's election in 1992. There will
be only 6 years between Mosely-Braun and Obama (or, if you play the long
odds, Keyes.) This might signal a hopeful trend in American politics.
But whether or not Barack Obama represents a new page in political
history remains to be seen.
William Jelani Cobb is an assistant professor of history at Spelman College and editor of The Essential Harold Cruse. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Visit his website at www.jelanicobb.com <http://www.jelanicobb.com/>.
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