Baldwin And The Fight For The Black Vote On Election Day

In 1965, the legendary essayist and cultural critic James Baldwin published “White Man’s Guilt,” reminding America of the fundamental and terrifying truth that history is an active force that we carry within us and is  “literally present in all that we do.” 

This country’s current attempts to systemically erode Black voting power reflect the deliberate re-emergence of historical patterns dating back to the 1800s. We are, as Baldwin noted then, “unconsciously controlled” by an inherited past that heavily dictates our present. The contemporary fight for political power and the right to have our voices heard through voting is a continuation of the battles we have fought for centuries. 

Today, as millions of Americans make the trek to their nearest ballot box to cast their votes, Baldwin’s words reverberate. Across the country, state legislatures have spent the better part of this election cycle attempting to orchestrate disenfranchisement with the sole purpose of diluting the Black electorate, in an effort to strip us of our political power. In the past two years alone, 22 states have passed nearly 50 new laws that make it harder for Americans to vote. 

In Kentucky, lawmakers have erected strict photo ID mandates that remove the ability of voters to use federal food assistance cards or Social Security cards as acceptable forms of ID to vote. Those without an appropriate form of photo identification were instructed to apply for a special free voter ID. 

Kentucky has established a longtime reputation for having some of the country’s most restrictive voting policies. It remains one of three states that permanently disenfranchise citizens with past felony convictions. 

In 2019, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear utilized his power as governor to sign an executive order restoring the right to vote to convicted felons who meet specific criteria. Before Beshear’s executive order, one out of four Black Kentuckians was ineligible to vote. When his term as governor ends next year, those voting rights could be stripped away by his replacement.

In Kansas, a law passed that reversed a crucial grace period for mail-in ballots received up to three days after election day had been ruthlessly challenged for months. The challenges made it all the way up to Kansas’ Supreme Court before the court decided that Kansas’ three-day grace period had to remain in place. A similar attempt to disqualify mail-in ballots in Mississippi postmarked by but received after election day was also rejected by higher courts.

Ongoing attempts to restrict Black voters amount to a tactical assault engineered to target areas with high concentrations of Black voters. In Ohio, Republican politicians introduced and pushed through a state law in 2006 that limited in-person early voting sites to just one per county. This year, one early voting center processed as many as 800 voters an hour as long lines accumulated at the designated early voting destinations. Some voters waited in lines as long as three hours to cast their vote. This single-site restriction penalizes highly populated, diverse urban areas and forces working-class residents to either vote during the weekend or might lose out on wages while they stand in long lines to vote.

One need not dig too deeply into history to unearth that this pattern of going to great lengths to deter or prevent Black Americans from voting has been happening since Black people were granted the right to vote in 1870. During the Reconstruction era, when it became clear that Black political mobilization could reshape the American South, state legislatures panicked.  

The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment initially enabled unprecedented Black political representation, sending Black senators and governors to the halls of power to transform southern governance. In response, white-dominated state legislatures orchestrated campaigns to systematically dismantle this newfound electoral presence. 

The federal government had stationed military troops throughout the South to protect Black voters and enforce constitutional rights. When the protective forces were withdrawn, southern states codified voter suppression into law and initiated decades of disenfranchisement. 

Ahead of elections this week, Trump has said he would consider sending armed federal troops, including ICE, to polling places to maintain “honest elections.”  In this case, the federal presence wouldn’t be to protect Black voters, but to intimidate them. Sending armed federal agents would be in direct violation of federal law that prohibits federal interference in elections. 

During the post-Reconstruction period in the late nineteenth century, state legislatures implemented poll taxes to exploit the harsh economic realities of newly emancipated families, turning voting into a luxury many couldn’t afford. 

A “grandfather clause” was introduced that paved the way for poor whites to vote without having to pay. Under the grandfather clause, anyone who had an ancestor who voted before the Civil War was given an exemption, which excluded Black folks who had been legally barred from voting before the war. In 1964, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment made poll taxes for federal elections illegal.   

The Republican-led U.S. The House of Representatives introduced a modern-day version of the poll tax when it passed the SAVE Act, requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote and specific forms of photo ID in order to vote in federal elections. While the measure passed the House, it failed to pass in the Senate. 

Political analysts have called the proposed photo ID requirements a modern-day poll tax because while registering to vote is still free, the documents that would have been required to register can be costly, and up to 21 million voters don’t have the required identification. More than half of Americans don’t have a passport, and 1 in 5 people in households making below $50,000 a year has one. Passport fees can quickly rack up to more than $165, and requesting a copy of a birth certificate can cost as much as $50. 

After Reconstruction, officials also used literacy tests to further disenfranchise Black people. White voting clerks were given complete discretion to pass or fail applicants based on race, and they routinely forced Black people to answer riddles with purposely confusing instructions like “Spell backwards, forwards.” When it became clear that these literacy tests excluded large swaths of poor whites, the rules were amended, and white registrars were given free rein to bend the rules to determine who passed and who failed. Predictably, most whites were given passing scores, while most Black people were not. 

When the hard-won legislative victories of the Civil Rights Movement dismantled those initial barriers to voting, those seeking to suppress the Black vote went back to the drawing board. Lawmakers shifted their strategy from outright exclusion to “vote dilution,” using racial and partisan gerrymandering to manipulate the boundaries of legislative maps. 

By “cracking” Black communities across multiple districts or “packing” them into a single one, mapmakers successfully minimized the electoral influence of Black voters by handing an advantage to specific candidates or parties. States also began to institute mandatory majority runoff elections so that if a Black candidate won a plurality of the vote, a later runoff would force a head-to-head match with their nearest competitor, allowing white voters to consolidate their voting power behind a white candidate to defeat them. 

In the lead-up to today’s elections, this battleground has continued through unprecedented levels of redistricting and a surge of newly enacted state restrictions. Three Southern states moved to eliminate majority-minority districts. Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama capitalized on the Supreme Court’s decision to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to redraw maps to favor Republican candidates. Concurrently, Texas redrew its map to insulate partisan majorities. As a result, millions of Black Americans are casting ballots within newly redrawn, diluted districts that aim to water down the impact of their vote. 

In response, civil rights organizations and grassroots advocates have been heavily focused on expanding Black voter turnout to counteract these barriers. Faith leaders in Black communities across the U.S. are helping by carrying on the Black voting tradition of getting “Souls to the Polls” to encourage members of the Black community to vote and, in some cases, have transported caravans of parishioners to early voting locations. 

This collective determination and modern caravans to polling places are a present-day manifestation of Baldwin’s belief that history is always present with us. Today, we are carrying our history with us, and by overcoming these current obstacles and finding our way to the polls, we prove that no matter how complex they build the maze to the ballot box, our votes will be cast and our voices will be heard.

SEE ALSO:

The True Power Of Black Voters Lies In Down-Ballot Races

Black Voters Are Ready. Now, Let’s Protect Our Power