Many hurdles faced by Black voters in Mississippi

[Stevicus]

AP Road Trip: In Mississippi, Black voters face many hurdles

This article discusses some of the struggles Black voters have in Mississippi in getting their voices heard, both past and present.

Meridian, Miss. (AP) — The old civil rights worker was sure the struggle would be over by now.

He’d fought so hard back in the ’60s. He’d seen the wreckage of burned churches, and the injuries of people who had been beaten. He’d seen men in white hoods. At its worst, he’d mourned three young men who were fighting for Black Mississippians to gain the right to vote, and who were kidnapped and executed on a country road just north of here.

But Charles Johnson, sitting inside the neat brick church in Meridian where he’s been pastor for over 60 years, worries that Mississippi is drifting into its past.

“I would never have thought we’d be where we’re at now, with Blacks still fighting for the vote,” said Johnson, 83, who was close to two of the murdered men, especially the New Yorker everyone called Mickey. “I would have never believed it.”

The article mentions that it's harder to vote in Mississippi than in any other state. No Black candidate has ever been elected to statewide office.

The opposition to Black voters in Mississippi has changed since the 1960s, but it hasn’t ended. There are no poll taxes anymore, no tests on the state constitution. But on the eve of the most divisive presidential election in decades, voters face obstacles such as state-mandated ID laws that mostly affect poor and minority communities and the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of former prisoners.

By at least one measure, it’s harder to vote in Mississippi than any other state. And despite Mississippi having the largest percentage of Black people of any state in the nation, a Jim Crow-era election law has ensured a Black person hasn’t been elected to statewide office in 130 years. After years of being shut out of state races, Democrats hope mobilizing Black voters and recruiting Black candidates can eventually give them a path back to relevance in one of the reddest of red states.

But sometimes, it can seem that voting rights in Mississippi are like its small towns and dirt roads, which can appear frozen in the past.

Today, with the presidential election weeks away, three of us on a reporting trip across America wanted to see what things were like in a state where the simple act of voting was impossible for nearly every Black person well into the 1960s. In a year when America has been marked by so many convulsions - a pandemic, an economic crisis, countless protests for racial justice, a virulent political divide - the road trip has been a way to look more deeply at a country struggling to define itself.

The article mentions the murder of Medgar Evers, the murders of three social workers (portrayed in the film Mississippi Burning), along with other historical struggles with voting rights in Mississippi.

Mississippi has broad restrictions on absentee voting, no early voting or online registration, absentee ballots that must be witnessed by notaries and voter ID laws that overwhelmingly affect the poor and minorities, since they are less likely to have state-approved identification. The restrictions have grown even tighter since a 2013 Supreme Court decision blocked many voting rights protections.

“Anything that increases the ‘costs’ of voting - the time it takes, the effort it takes - that tends to decrease voter turnout,” said Conor Dowling, a professor of political science at the University of Mississippi. “And there is evidence that some of these burdens are disproportionately felt by minority voters.”

The poverty rate in Mississippi is one of the highest in the country. Also, anyone with a felony conviction on their record is prohibited from voting for the rest of their life (which has disenfranchised almost 16% of the Black population of Mississippi).

Mississippi also has widespread poverty. Nearly one-third of Black people here live below the poverty line, more than double the rate for white people, which means taking a day off work to vote can be too expensive.

Then there are the felony voting restrictions, which in Mississippi have disenfranchised almost 16% of the Black population, researchers say — compared to just 5% in nearby Missouri, another deeply Republican state. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Mississippi’s restrictions a holdover from an old state constitution designed specifically to disenfranchise Black voters.

Understandably, there is distrust of government and a strong sense of apathy among voters.

Distrust of the government runs deep in the Black community in Mississippi, where harsh voter suppression tactics - voting fees, tests on the state constitution, even guessing the number of beans in a jar - kept all but about 6% of Black residents from voting into the 1960s. A Black person who even tried to register to vote could find themselves fired from their job and evicted from their home.

As a result, Black politicians have long been fighting an apathy born of generations of frustration.

Some voters are sitting the election out this year.

Anthony Boggan sometimes votes, but is sitting it out this year, disgusted at the choices.

“They’re all going to tell you the same thing,” he said. “Anything to get elected.”

A 49-year-old Black Jackson resident with a small moving company, Boggan likes how the economy boomed during the Trump years, but can’t bring himself to vote for a man known for his insults and name-calling.

“He’s a butthole,” Boggan said, as a group of Black friends, including one who planned to vote for Trump, laughed and nodded in agreement. “Everybody knows he’s a butthole.”

As for Biden: He and Trump both “got dementia,” Boggan said, and he hates how the former vice president tries to curry favor in the Black community.

“Why does everything he says got to be about the Black? ‘I did more of this for the Black. I’m going to do all of this for the Black,’” he said, angrily mimicking Biden. “Just have them do all this for the American people!”

Others find it painful that there are those sitting out the election. A general lack of faith in the system ostensibly leads to voter apathy.

That kind of talk is painful for Kim Houston.

“Sometimes I think we beat ourselves,” said Houston, the president of the Meridian City Council, the frustration clear in her voice. “There’s this mindset that (voting) doesn’t matter, that nothing is going to change, that the election system is rigged.”

It adds up to a state where plenty of Black people have reached office - by some estimates it has the highest number of Black officials in the country - but many of them are local: mayors, city council members, city officials.

With those officials came significant infrastructure improvements, such as roads paved in Black neighborhoods and sewage systems installed that allowed Black homeowners to finally abandon their outhouses. But in Mississippi, a Black politician can rise only so high, they say, and are kept from those statewide offices.

He’s driven down the road a couple times since then, and it reminds him of the continued difficulties that Black people face in Mississippi when it comes to voting.

“I’m afraid the road is just as crooked now as it was then,” he said.

 

[Altfish]

And the US is supposed to be a democracy!!!!

 

[Stevicus]

And the US is supposed to be a democracy!!!!

"The rest of America don't mean jack ****; you in Mississippi now."

 

[Cooky]

AP Road Trip: In Mississippi, Black voters face many hurdles

This article discusses some of the struggles Black voters have in Mississippi in getting their voices heard, both past and present.



The article mentions that it's harder to vote in Mississippi than in any other state. No Black candidate has ever been elected to statewide office.





The article mentions the murder of Medgar Evers, the murders of three social workers (portrayed in the film Mississippi Burning), along with other historical struggles with voting rights in Mississippi.



The poverty rate in Mississippi is one of the highest in the country. Also, anyone with a felony conviction on their record is prohibited from voting for the rest of their life (which has disenfranchised almost 16% of the Black population of Mississippi).



Understandably, there is distrust of government and a strong sense of apathy among voters.



Some voters are sitting the election out this year.



Others find it painful that there are those sitting out the election. A general lack of faith in the system ostensibly leads to voter apathy.

Looks like a bunch of baloney.

 

[Kenny]

No Black candidate has ever been elected to statewide office.

Never say never...

Alexander Kelso Davis was a state legislator and a Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi.[1] He was impeached by the resurgent Democrats towards the end of the Reconstruction era in 1876.

He was a lawyer from Tennessee.[2] He came to Mississippi in 1869 and lived in Noxubee County. He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1870 until 1873. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi from 1874, succeeding Ridgley C. Powers, and served until he resigned as he faced impeachment in 1876. He left politics and became a pastor.[1]

List of African-American statewide elected officials - Wikipedia

But there definitely should be more people with increased melanin in the Mississippi political arena. But one must wonder... is it because of the Republicans, the Democrats or both?

 

[Stevicus]

Looks like a bunch of baloney.

Now that's a convincing argument.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Last election the Democrats got a fairly high percentage. There were many blue counties here. Black folks here are also cool customers, and they have a lot of variance in who they support.

That 16% disenfranchisement is terrible. The situation is the same in Virginia where a felony can never be expunged, and in every state many times its a state law that makes one a felon. You don't have to break a federal law to be marked. If a state wanted to it could make traffic tickets into felonies, and then anyone with a speeding ticket couldn't vote.

 

[Stevicus]

Never say never...

Alexander Kelso Davis was a state legislator and a Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi.[1] He was impeached by the resurgent Democrats towards the end of the Reconstruction era in 1876.

He was a lawyer from Tennessee.[2] He came to Mississippi in 1869 and lived in Noxubee County. He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1870 until 1873. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi from 1874, succeeding Ridgley C. Powers, and served until he resigned as he faced impeachment in 1876. He left politics and became a pastor.[1]

List of African-American statewide elected officials - Wikipedia

But there definitely should be more people with increased melanin in the Mississippi political arena. But one must wonder... is it because of the Republicans, the Democrats or both?

You're correct. The article actually said "a Black person hasn’t been elected to statewide office in 130 years." Just the same, though, that's quite a long time.

 

[Vinayaka]

And Mississippi has the highest percentage of African Americans of all states. 37%

List of U.S. states and territories by African-American population - Wikipedia

 

[Kenny]

You're correct. The article actually said "a Black person hasn’t been elected to statewide office in 130 years." Just the same, though, that's quite a long time.

<3

But again...

But there definitely should be more people with increased melanin in the Mississippi political arena. But one must wonder... is it because of the Republicans, the Democrats or both?

 

[Revoltingest]

Now that's a convincing argument.

When a quick perusal shows evidence such as the Medgar Evers killing,
I'm disinclined to read further. That speaks to the past, not the now.
Is it really so difficult for a black to cast a vote?
Poll tax? Threats at the voting booth?

 

[Cooky]

When a quick perusal shows evidence such as the Medgar Evers killing,
I'm disinclined to read further. That speaks to the past, not the now.
Is it really so difficult for a black to cast a vote?
Poll tax? Threats at the voting booth?

I have little sympathy for people who love to complain all the time, but aren't actually willing to do anything to help themselves.

 

[George-ananda]

In 2020 the majority of the black populations problems strike me as self-caused. Apathy, 16% felons, just from what I read in the OP.

 

[Father Heathen]

Looks like a bunch of baloney.

Because...?

 

[Cooky]

Because...?

It's obvious... It's just more of the constant complaining... It's a popular thing to do these days -- to complain until someone fixes your problems for you while you do absolutely nothing to help.

Gotta be the "shot calla"... Then you "tap, tap, tap in".

 

[Father Heathen]

I have little sympathy for people who love to complain all the time, but aren't actually willing to do anything to help themselves.

They do, but the powers that be tend to undermine their efforts.

 

[Father Heathen]

It's obvious... It's just more of the constant complaining... It's a popular thing to do these days -- to complain and hope someone fixes your problems while you do absolutely nothing to help.

I'm pretty sure they didn't vote for the politicians that keep their schools under funded.

 

[Cooky]

They do, but the powers that be tend to undermine their efforts.

Sounds like constant complaining. I'm not buying it.

 

[Cooky]

I'm pretty sure they didn't vote for the politicians that keep their schools under funded.

Always someone else's fault.

 

[Father Heathen]

Sounds like constant complaining. I'm not buying it.

So you've lived in the same neighborhoods and shared the same experiences? What would you different in their shoes?