The US Government taking away voting rights? It’s not the first time we’ve “turned on a dime” on the right to vote.
Voting Rights Act
This week, the United States Supreme Court gutted the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The conservative super-majority fulfilled a goal of Chief Justice John Roberts. That goal started in the early days of the Reagan Administration. The future chief was the “point man” for Reagan against a 1982 Congressional amendment to the act. The amendment added that states had an affirmative obligation to draw district lines in a way that would expand minority opportunities to win office.
After the original act was passed in 1965, many Southern states continued to dilute the power of blacks by dividing them up into other, white majority districts. Reagan depended on the Nixon developed “Southern Strategy” for reelection, and needed the South’s support to remain in office. And, Roberts did not believe that the law should “discriminate” in favor of any single race, including minorities, in spite of the fact that laws discriminated against minorities throughout the first two hundred and eight years of American history.
The single most powerful law to guarantee black voting rights (and the power that comes from those votes) was the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its future amendments.
It was the culmination of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, led by Dr. King. And it followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Those two laws altered the legal processes that were used to keep minorities down, since 1876.
What happened in 1876? Here’s a brief history lesson.
Reconstruction
At the end of the Civil War in 1865, Union troops occupied large parts of the South.
An example: it wasn’t until June 19th, 1865, over two months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, that Union forces reached Galveston, Texas. And it was only then that the enslaved people in Texas were freed, under the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order which went into effect in January of 1863. (That’s the “back story” on the Federal holiday “Juneteenth”).
And over the next decade, Congress added the 13th Amendment (ending slavery), the 14th Amendment
(guaranteeing citizenship and due process) and the 15th Amendment (granting black men the right to vote). Those amendments were enforced in the former Confederacy by the remaining Union troops, who still occupied parts of the South. They guaranteed black political power, by making sure they could vote, and by banning many former Confederates from public office. There were sixteen Black members of Congress (two in the Senate, fourteen in the House), and even a Black governor of Louisiana in that decade.
Tilden Wins
By 1876 the Northern Republicans grew tired of the cost of Reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party remained still divided by the Civil War. The Northern Democrats were a “loyal opposition” and the Southern Democrats the remnants of the party that seceded from the Union in the first place. And then came the Presidential election of 1876.
Republicans nominated Ohio’s Governor and former Union General Rutherford Hayes. Democrats chose New York’s Governor and career lawyer and politician Samuel Tilden. (He was against enslavement, but never served in the War). Tilden won the popular vote by almost three percent (50.92% to 47.92%) but was one vote short of winning the electoral college.
Twenty electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon were disputed, with both sides claiming “they won”.
By Committee
Congress established a committee to determine how those votes should be counted.
There were fifteen members, seven Republicans, seven Democrats, and originally one Supreme Court Justice who was considered “neutral”, David Davis. But, as the committee was meeting, Davis was appointed by the Democratic Illinois legislature as a United States Senator. Democrats thought that would guarantee his vote, and a win for Tilden.
But Davis, a lifetime Republican who served as Lincoln’s 1860 campaign manager, promptly recused himself from the committee.
Republican Court Justice Benjamin Bradley was then appointed. While written history remains “murky” about what happened next (there’s no documentation), the outcome was clear. Despite clear evidence that Tilden won at least the one more vote he needed, the committee gave all twenty votes to Hayes, making him President.
Four years later, Democrats won back the Presidency with New York Governor Grover Cleveland.
There’s a rumored story about a White House dinner during his administration, where some of the participants bragged about the deal “they made” to end Reconstruction. But on one knows the details, the diners, or the real discussion.
Corrupt Bargain
Why did Davis recuse himself, creating a Republican majority on the committee?
As soon as Hayes became President, the remaining Union troops withdrew from the South. While earlier laws made the Black Codes (laws making the newly freed slaves second class citizens) illegal, the Jim Crow laws soon came into effect. The concept was that while the law might say blacks were “equal”, the social norms required they be “separate” from white people in public settings. This was confirmed by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v Ferguson. And, inevitably, separate was NOT equal. Meanwhile, Southern states (and even many Northern states) engaged in gerrymandering, voting taxes and tests, KKK terrorism, and other means of disenfranchising minorities.
Congress soon passed the “Posse Comitatus” law, barring Federal troops from most law enforcement activities in the internal United States.
And even before the Hayes-Tilden election, Congress had already granted amnesty to most Confederates who then could run for office.
The election of 1876, historically called the “corrupt bargain”, marked the first end of an era of Black civil rights and political advancement.
Now, with last week’s US Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v Callais, it’s happened again.
Hopefully it won’t take another one hundred and fifty years to fix this one.
