Remnants of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation in Modern Times

[vet_against_Bush]

INTIMIDATION AND SUPPRESSION MINORITY VOTERS

It appears that Jim Crow tactics are not dead in the United States of America. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that voter intimidation tactics are being practice in various parts of the country to suppress the vote of minorities in past and recent elections.
In December 2002, U.S. Representative John Conyers (Conyers, 2002), a ranking member of Congress, wrote to U. S. Attorney General John Ashcroft asking that the Department of Justice investigate efforts to suppress the votes of minorities in the 2002 midterm election.
In August, Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote that state police officers had frightened and intimidated many elderly African American voters in Orlando Florida, by going to their homes and interrogating them as part of an odd investigation. Other volunteers working in the get-out-the vote campaign have been questioned in their homes by state police officers (Herbert, B. 2004). Most of the volunteers lived in black neighborhoods and full investigations are underway.
In July, 2004 Ralph G. Nears, President, for People for the American Way Foundation, testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and described several incidents that occurred earlier this year where minority voters, specifically Native American and African Americans were targeted for other voter intimidation and suppression actions. In South Dakota, Native Americans were sent to the wrong polling places to vote and given misinformation about identification needed to vote. In Texas, students from a historically black college were challenged about the right to register to vote by a district attorney in Waller County. Three decades earlier, a federal court order was needed (in the same county) to stop the local registrar from discriminating against students. In 2002, African American voters were target in Louisiana through the distribution of flyers, telling them to go to the polls three days after a state election was held.
According the Springfield News Leader, up to 58,000 voters, many who were African American were prevented from voting because voting machines were not delivered to New Orleans in time for voters to vote on September 18, 2004. Two civil rights organizations, the NAACP and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, have called for an investigation by the Justice Department. African American Voters in New Orleans represent 70 percent of voters (Simpson, D. 2004).
The growing evidence of voter intimidation and suppression (remnants of Jim Crow) indicate that not everyone in the U. S. respects democracy. Perhaps some are too anxious to take matters into their own hands and shape history as they think it should be, not “of the people, by the people, and for the people”. Any effort targeting minorities for voter intimidation and suppression is unconscionable and unacceptable in the 21st century. When any group or individual is targeted for voter suppression the rights of all Americans are threatened. For more detailed information about voter intimidation and suppression, please refer to references listed below.


Missouri Association of Social Welfare.
Springfield Chapter



Conyers, J. (2002). Letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft. (Retrieved

September13, 2004, from

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/agmidtermvoteltr121702.pdf.

Herbert, B. (2004). Suppress the vote.

Retrieved September 17, 2004, from New York Times

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/081704C.shtml.

Neas, R. G. (2004). Testimony of Ralph G. Neas president, people for the american way

foundation, before the u.s. commission on civil rights.

Retrieved September 17, 2004, from

(http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?old=16368.

Simpson , D. (2004, September 25.). Civil rights groups ask for election

investigation. The Springfield News Leader, p.A4.


Posted by permission of the author.