Johnny C. Johnson
In 2008, voters played an integral role in changing the history of America by electing Barack Obama as our 44th president, the first African American to hold the office. The mass number of Americans going to the polls to vote their conscience in that election will serve as a defining point in American history.
The past two elections in Erie have seen a significant decrease in the numbers of those who go to the polls to vote, including both African Americans and voters of other ethnicities. Whether this decrease is due to voter apathy, poor weather conditions, or poor economic times, I'll let the sociologists, political analysts, and commentators debate.
The right to vote came at a high price
My chief concern is the lack of African American voters in Erie going to the polls to exercise a right that was not freely given but came through our ancestors' sacrifice of their blood, their sweat, and their tears. The apostle Paul's advice to Timothy as he preached the gospel to others was to "bring to their remembrance."
Let us be mindful that from our introduction into America, using 1619 as a start date, we were enslaved and had no rights that were freely given to other Americans. Thus, from 1619 to 1870, after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, emancipated and formerly enslaved African Americans were given (not guaranteed) the right to vote. Therefore, it was an elapsed period of 251 years that African Americans were denied the right given to all American citizens except women.
The Reconstruction Period from 1865 to 1877 gave former enslaved African Americans rights commensurate with white citizens. Throughout the South, freed slaves now had within their grasp something faster than a locomotive, more powerful than a speeding bullet, and something that would enable them to leap tall buildings — political obstacles — with a single bound. Southerners could see that with the vote, these freed slaves could indeed become Supermen. During this period, African Americans were elected to their local political assemblies, their state legislatures, the Congress of the United States, and as governors of states.
Power is never given freely
We must understand that power is never freely given to the powerless and those who are stripped of it seek ways to regain it. So, as a result, strategies, plots, and laws were engendered to disenfranchise the newly freed African Americans and speed the return to the ways of the "Old South" — or business as usual in America. The Compromise of 1877 completely sealed the coffin and buried all hopes fostered by Reconstruction and African American freedom.
During this period, we saw a return to the former power structure and the legal maneuvering (states' rights) sanctioned by the federal government to subvert and deny equal opportunities to African Americans as citizens. In the Southern states, poll taxes, scare tactics, and the inability to read legal documents set the stage for denying African Americans the right to vote. If you believe the theme given in the movie "Birth of a Nation," you can see all the propaganda surrounding Reconstruction and the denigration of African Americans as ignorant people with animal mentality and a preponderance to satisfy "base" desires.
From 1877 to 1965, a span of 88 years saw African Americans denied the right to vote given them by the ratified 15th Amendment to the Constitution as it was allowed to be changed and reinterpreted under the guise of states' rights by states.
Let us not sleep
I hope we can remember the Civil Rights Movement that through a great loss of life allowed us to gain not only governmental and political rights, but also our God-given rights as his creation. We may assume that to many people the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and its ramifications of securing equality for all African Americans did not sit pretty and currently does not sit pretty with many Americans. If I may theorize that the African American vote in the 1960s and early 1970s was for many people a sign of a possible resurrection of Reconstruction. African Americans now were members of city councils, mayors of cities, representatives in state and national legislative bodies, and governors of states. Take a look today at how — again under the guise of states' rights — legislation and other strategies like gerrymandering, redistricting, and voter restrictions are being used to once again disenfranchise African Americans and poor voters.
From a historical perspective, our votes have been agents of change in our communities, our states, and our nation. Therefore, let us not sleep but awake to the realization that our votes do make us Supermen and kryptonite — the system as we view and comprehend it — should not be what we fear, but rather apathy, lack of vision, and division within our own ranks that tend to keep us weak and powerless.
Johnny C. Johnson is a retired Erie School District teacher.
