(The much misquoted first words and title to Stephen Stills song, sung by Crosby, Still and Nash, Helplessly Hoping)
Recent History
Even at my age, nearing seventy, it’s hard to remember the hard won victories of the 1960’s Civil Rights movement. Many of those took place in the early 1960’s, when I was a young child. It was the era of hope for racial equality. The dramatic struggles, led by Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, put racial discrimination up-front for the American people. It was based on a simple principle: when confronted with the contrast between America’s founding philosophy and the reality of racial inequity, America would choose for the good.
Those leaders believed that if all of America saw what awful violence was done to peaceful protestors, the good citizens of the United States wouldn’t tolerate it. And in the “long view” that Dr. King and the rest took (“the arc of the moral universe”), they were right. The visions of peaceful demonstrators being harassed and attacked at lunch counters made us cringe. The “Freedom Riders” dragged off buses and beaten near to death made us shudder. And the attack dogs and fire hoses of Police Chief Bull Connor in Birmingham, unleashed on well-dressed young people whose only difference was the color of their skin, was intolerable.
Jim Crow
All of those marches, and all of that suffering, led to the March on Washington, best known for King’s “I Have A Dream” speech delivered from the Lincoln Memorial. Ultimately President Johnson (newly in office after the Kennedy assassination) was able to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That ended “Jim Crow”, the legal separation of the races. But it did not guarantee the right of Black people to vote.
It was the terrible attack of state police force against peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama that convinced America that the right to vote was a separate, and special, American principle. And it was the decision of the ABC television network that placed that violence in front of the American people. In 1965, there were three networks, and at best, three channels on television. The most popular Sunday evening show was ABC’s Sunday night movie, and on March 7th, 1965, the movie was, ironically, Judgment at Nuremburg, about the Nazi war crime trials.
ABC interrupted the movie with coverage of the violence in Selma. The whole country saw peaceful citizens, dressed in “Sunday best”, walking across a bridge, then savagely beaten by the police. As Dr. King instructed, they did not fight back. They were young, King himself only thirty-five, and the physical leader of the march, John Lewis, was twenty-five.
Voting Rights
America was outraged. And King convinced Johnson to back the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the final legal block in building Black civil rights in America. That Act stood as the firm foundation of American voting fairness for forty-five years. Current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, an opponent of the Voting Rights Act since the early 1980’s, leads the current attack on it. He finally cobbled together a five vote majority to restrict the law in 2013. And now, with the Trump influence of three appointees on the Court, last month he eviscerated it.
The corpse of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t even cold when states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida moved to redraw legislative districts. That includes Congressional Districts. Their goal was simple and racist: to obliterate Black majority districts (required by the Act) and dissolve the power of Blacks voting in the South.
We went from 2026 to 1963, at the speed of the internet.
Shorten the Arc
There are long term solutions. If: if Democrats regain control of the House, Senate and the White House, a new Voting Rights Act (the John Lewis Act) could be passed. The Court would be hard-pressed to overrule the newly acquired power of that Congress and Presidential authority. But that’s for 2029. And there are protests happening now. The drama on the floor of the Tennessee legislature, as the few Black members burned paper Confederate flags watching their own districts wiped out, is but one example.
But we can’t wait for 2029. Too much can happen, too many things have to go right, to depend on that. Besides, it requires an unfounded “faith” that free and fair elections will still be available. Every action by the current government denigrates that belief. So what can be done NOW?
At the moment, the re-birth of Jim Crow voting is confined to the old Confederacy. Americans can determine not to spend their money in those states. They are all vulnerable to an economic boycott by Americans who think their racist re-districting is intolerable. And for those who think “economic boycotts” aren’t a “fair” way to protest, I only point you to the Boston Tea Party. It was the original economic protest against government inequity.
Empty Bridges
And modern Black leadership groups are once again turning to their young people to lead the struggle. A huge and visible part of the “old South” today is college football: Alabama, Clemson, Florida State, Florida U and Miami; LSU and Tennessee. The Southeastern Conference is the obvious example. The schools depend on the abilities of young Black men to win their games. And those young men now have great choices, not just on where they attend, but how much they are paid. If they instead choose USC, or Ohio State, or even MICHIGAN (a dangerous thought for one who lives in Buckeye Country); the impact will be swift.
We can all make economic choices to speak out against racists laws. We can reward those states who resist the MAGA pressure, and we can deny our money to those that don’t. There won’t be a “Edmund Pettus Bridge” moment. But an empty Lake Pontchartrain Causeway to New Orleans, or Overseas Causeway to the Florida Keys, or Wilson Bridge to Mobile; might make the point.
