The Power of the Black Vote: And Government Tactics to Block It

The Power of the Black Vote and Government Tactics to Block It

The Power of the Black Vote and Government Tactics to Block It

JoJo Varlack-Hicks

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2020 JoJo Varlack-Hicks

All rights reserved.

The Power of the Black Vote

and Government Tactics to Block It

ISBN

978-1-63676-578-5 Paperback

978-1-63676-191-6 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63676-194-7 Ebook

Contents

Foreword

The Power of the Black Vote:A Clarion Call to Action

Introduction

How I Became Interested in Voting Rights

Why the Black Vote Is Important

Part 1.SUPPRESSION, SUPPLEMENTS, AND ELECTIONS

Past Tactics to Disenfranchise the Black Vote

Disenfranchisement

Recent Tactics to Disenfranchise Black Votes

Voter Identification

Real Identification

Redistricting/Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering

Incarceration of African Americans and Minorities

Closing Voting Locations & Ending Early Voting

Purging State Voter Registrations

Mail-In Ballots and Sabotage of the Postal System

Two Acts Don’t Make It Right

What I Learned at the Fort Valley State University

Three Important Amendments to Blacks

Blocking Black Votes through the UN-Justice System

Jim Crow Laws and Separate but Equal

Plessy v. Ferguson

Brown v. Board of Education

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

Purging Nonvoters

All Elections Are Important

Local Elections

State Elections

Congressional Votes Database

Presidential Election

Supreme Court Justices

Part 2.ISSUES AFFECTING BLACK COMMUNITIES

Education:An Important Issue to Blacks

Juneteenth

Black Wall Street

Beckys and Karens of the Past

What Is Really in Those History Books?

What If This Happened to Whites

What Is Our Responsibility?

Health Care

Dental Care

Average Black Culture Diet

Medicaid

Medicare

Diet

Food Deserts

We Are Our Own Worst Enemy

Self-Care

Dismantling of Affordable Care Act – Obamacare

Police Brutality & Excessive Force

Mr. Rodney King

Mr. Amadou Diallo

Mr. Eric Garner

Mr. Michael Brown

Mr. Tamir Rice

Mr. Walter Scott

Mr. Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr.

Ms. Breonna Taylor

Police Reform

What Do My Friends and Family Know and Think about Voting

Survey Results

Important Issues

Importance of Research and Sanctifying Your Vote

Is Your Vote Valuable?

Voting in Congressional Elections

When Power Is More Important Than We the People

Call to Action – Your Responsibility

How to Register to Vote

Check your voter registration status online or re-register

Now, Do Your Homework

Casting Your Vote

Voices of Former Slaves

Voices from Family and Friends and the Importance of Voting

Acknowledgments

Appendix

The vote is precious. It’s almost sacred, so go out and vote like you never voted before.

John Lewis

This book is dedicated to voters whose voices were and are suppressed by the very government that passed laws for Blacks to vote, not once but twice, and continues to make it difficult to cast a vote.

Foreword

In this timely, provocative book, JoJo Varlack-Hicks clearly and thought-provokingly addresses the efforts made by those in power to continue their quest to deprive blacks of their constitutional right to vote. She also challenges the blacks at who the oppressors’ efforts are directed to cease from aiding the oppressors by failing to exercise their right to vote and failing to encourage other blacks to vote.

JoJo brings to this writing the passion, critical thinking, and discernment she exhibited in her studies as a student at Fort Valley State University. I enjoyed reading this outstanding book just as much as I enjoyed reading her essays and other writings as her major professor.

This is a book that is certain to educate, motivate, and energize the apathetic black citizen to exercise his constitutional right to vote, and encourage those fighting to secure that right to continue the fight!

Gregory Homer

The Power of the Black Vote: A Clarion Call to Action

I have known JoJo for thirty years and trust her wisdom and prescient judgments. Her book clearly establishes the case against systemic voter suppression designed to disenfranchise voters of color and maintain white political power. JoJo began writing this timely book more than a year ago—prior to the most recent, blatant, and almost daily acts of voter suppression designed to bypass the people’s will and reelect Donald Trump as president.

The Power of the Black Vote should be read by all Americans, regardless of ethnicity, color, or religious persuasion, because if successful, in this age of precise electronic targeting of voters, these tactics can be deployed against any segment of voters opposed to the agenda of those in power regardless of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, or age. Moreover, those employing these suppression tactics will never have to cede power. At this point, voting will become a perfunctory endorsement of whichever political cabal has succeeded in wresting the power of the ballot from the people.

Abraham Lincoln reportedly described the ballot as being stronger than a bullet in an 1856 address to the Republican State Convention. His election by the people four years later came on the precipice of a war that threatened the unity of our nation. It was the power of the ballot that positioned Lincoln, with a single-minded will, to preserve the Union. In doing so, he emancipated a formerly enslaved people and set in motion a series of amendments and laws leading to their equal treatment under the law and ultimately the Voting Rights Act, by which they were granted the power of the ballot to preserve their hard-won rights.

The quote attributed to Lincoln likely came from an August 26, 1863, letter to longtime friend, James C. Conkling, in which he wrote, To be quite plain you are dissatisfied with me about the negro [sic]. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself [sic] on this subject. . . . You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps would have it retracted. . . . [T]here can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that [sic] they who take such an appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.

Ironically, in an act that is the ultimate goal of voter disenfranchisement and suppression, voters were denied the voice of their vote when a little more than two years later and a short five months following his reelection, Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865. What eventually followed was a period of robust black political participation, including election to public office, and then the slow unwinding of the hard-won political gains. As JoJo asserts, the fear of this power was unleashed and a resulting loss of white power as America became increasingly brown is now fueling recent voter suppression activities.

The right to vote is a fundamental constitutional right that cannot be abridged or denied by the federal or state governments on account of race, color, or previous condition servitude, sex, or age (Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Sixth Constitutional Amendments).

Despite these protections, recent and blatant attacks on the right to vote threaten the very foundation of our Constitution and democracy:

•Federal – Removal of mailboxes and mail sorting equipment, and reduction of overtime and service hours by the postal service threatens to delay the counting of mail-in ballots.

•Florida – In an effort to subvert the votes of 1.5 million formerly incarcerated persons, Florida’s governor and its Republican legislature added to the law restoring voter rights what amounts to a poll tax, by requiring those whose voting rights were restored to pay all fines and fees from their sentence before they are permitted to vote. Florida was a must-win state in President Trump’s re-election bid.

•Illinois – Black voters were targeted in a robocall attempting to dissuade them from mailing in their ballots with misinformation indicating their personal information would be added to a public database and they could face arrest for outstanding warrants or be forced to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials.

•Texas – Governor Greg Abbott removed mail-in ballot drop boxes and ordered the return of ballots to a single clerk’s office in every county, further limiting a voter’s ability to participate in the 2020 election on the pretext of preventing unproven voter fraud.

•Federal – The president of the United States sought to intimidate voters by calling on his supporters to watch the polls.

However, protection of the ballot is only one step in the process of preserving our democracy as we again find ourselves on the precipice of a great war. We must respond by electing politicians who will take a hard stance on homegrown terrorists and militia—which Trump has refused to do—that again threaten to take by the bullet that which they cannot win with the ballot.

Every American who loves their democratic freedoms should read this book, which is written in an easily understood manner and accessible to all, and heed its warning.

Carolyn Quick Tillery, Esquire

Author, The African-American Heritage Cookbook Series

Introduction

If you don’t know what happened behind you, you won’t know what is happening in front of you.¹

Joe Madison

As a child growing up in Georgia in the 1960s, I had this question in my head: Why do they (white people) hate us so much? I remember watching television and seeing the teeth of German shepherds deeply gripped onto the legs of black men; water shooting from the hoses of fire hydrants so forcefully that black men and women were knocked to the ground; and policemen, the very people who were supposed to protect us, were doing nothing of the sort, but instead were beating black men with billy clubs and dragging bloody bodies off like trash. I remember looking at the news coverage of President John F. Kennedy being shot, crying uncontrollably, and asking myself, Why, Lord? This scenario repeated itself when his brother Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were also killed. Each died fighting for the equality of all mankind. Those were challenging times in our country.

Why were black men and women treated with such cruelty? Simple. They wanted to exercise their constitutional right to vote—a right under a few amendments in the United States Constitution:

1.Amendment Fourteen, ratified July 9, 1868, Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt (weren’t black people citizens?); and

2.Amendment Fifteen, ratified February 3, 1870, Right to Vote Not Denied by Race (doesn’t this include black men?).²

If these amendments included black men, why did our government come up with so many illegal tactics to prevent blacks from voting? Furthermore, why to this day does our government continue coming up with tactics to prevent not just the black vote, but the votes of many minority citizens whose skin color is not white?

Years passed after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While things appeared to get better, the more they changed, the more they stayed the same. The spoken and unspoken rules for blacks were much different than those for whites. Before I continue, it is important to explain the use of the terms blacks and whites. In the early 1960s, these were the predominant races. Changes in the laws were based on the unfair treatment of blacks. Allow me to further say that when I speak of white people, I cannot and will not clump all whites as perpetrators, for many whites stood and died alongside blacks for the rights to vote and to fair treatment, just as they are today! Lastly, much of what is discussed is uncomfortable yet necessary. Like anything in life, when issues are not addressed, they fester and eventually rupture. America has ruptured and now the issues must be discussed if we are to get past this. We cannot continue avoiding the elephant in the room because it is very obvious.

How I Became Interested in Voting Rights

I attended Georgetown University and studied Policy Leadership. The first class on policymaking was very interesting and encouraged me to learn more. In the second class, though, I was bored stiff, not because of the professor, but because of the material. I loathed reading about political science and authors of philosophy. Might as well have stuck me with a fork because I was done—or so I thought.

The more classes I took, the more I realized this was right up my alley after all. I discovered I could make a difference and wanted to make a difference, but I struggled with how to get my voice to the public. I wanted to talk about many topics, like one paper I authored in class: Why does Congress pass laws for the citizens, but doesn’t follow them?

For example, Congress passed a law stating buildings will be accessible for the disabled, yet how many buildings in the Washington, DC capital area are not accessible to the disabled? Why is there a law to protect