The Unfinished Agenda of the Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March

By The Editors of Black Issues in Higher Education (BIHE) and Tavis Smiley

WHY A 56-MILE WALK FOR FREEDOM IN 1965 STILL CHALLENGES AMERICA TODAY

THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 WAS THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, FOREVER CHANGING POLITICS IN AMERICA. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, VOICES OF THE ERA, ALONG WITH SOME OF TODAY'S MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITERS, SCHOLARS, AND SOCIAL ACTIVISTS, COMMEMORATE THE STRUGGLE AND EXAMINE WHY THE BATTLE MUST STILL BE WON.

"One of the difficult lessons we have learned is that you cannot depend on American institutions to function without pressure. Any real change in the status quo depends on continued creative action to sharpen the conscience of the nation."--MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

"As long as half our eligible voters exercise the right that so many in Selma marched and died for, we've got a very long bridge to cross."--BILL CLINTON

"I would hope that students today can learn from Selma to acquire a better understanding of how oppressed people with limited resources can free themselves and make the world better."--CLAYBORNE CARSON, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 24, 2007
• ISBN: 9780470255384

Book preview

The Unfinished Agenda

of

the Selma-Montgomery

Voting Rights March

The Unfinished Agenda

of

the Selma-Montgomery

Voting Rights March

The Editors of Black Issues in Higher Education

with

Dara N. Byrne, Ph.D.

LANDMARKS IN CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 2005 by Black Issues in Higher Education. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

Design and composition by Navta Associates, Inc.

Photo credits: pp. 8, 23, 30, 38, Library of Congress; p. 49, Ed Reinke, Associated Press; p. 74, Flip Schulke/ CORBIS; p. 79, Scott Applewhite, Associated Press; p. 92, Seth Perlman, Associated Press; p. 106, Hillery Smith Shay, Associated Press; p. 154, Victoria Arocho, Associated Press; p. 158, Ron Edmonds, Associated Press;p. 168, Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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ISBN 0471-71037-7

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book represents an important period of African American history, when the torch of democracy was passed from one brave body of men and women to all the generations that followed. This book is dedicated to them, the torch passers and the recipients.

And so it is on a more personal level that torches are also passed and additional dedications are appropriate. The Cox family has just witnessed the passing of our matriarch, Artensie Wesley Cox. She leaves an incredible void for she was a special woman.

Picking up her torch are Rhyann Lee Clark and Rhyann Lee’s new brother, Dakota Scott Clark. Their world has been profoundly affected by those events in Alabama in the 1960s. This book is dedicated to all of the members of the Cox and Wesley families, past, present, and future.

William E. Cox

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Reflecting on The Unfinished Agenda of the Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March by Dara N. Byrne and William E. Cox

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Selma to Montgomery: An Unfinished Agenda by Tavis Smiley

PART ONE CIVIL RIGHT NO. 1

1 VOICES

Martin Luther King Jr.

Lyndon Baines Johnson

Joseph E. Lowery

John Lewis

2 THE CRUCIBLE: How Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge Changed Everything by Clayborne Carson

PART TWO THE ARITHMETIC OF POWER

3 VOICES

William E. Cox

J. L. Chestnut Jr.

4 THE PARTISAN LANDSCAPE: How Blacks Became the Indispensable Democrats by Ronald Walters

5 NEW DILEMMAS: Redistricting and Racial Politics by Carol M. Swain

6 ONE VOTE, ONE COLOR: Understanding the Connection between Racial Identity and Voting Preferences by Kenny J. Whitby

PART THREE BRIDGES TO CROSS

7 VOICES

Henry Sanders

Andrew Young

Bill Clinton

Lani Guinier

8 BEYOND RACIAL POLITICS, OR NOT?: Chicago’s Experiment in Coalition Politics by Keith W. Reeves

9 LOSING THE RIGHT TO VOTE: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement by Jamie Fellner and Marc Mauer

PART FOUR PARALLEL STRUGGLES

10 VOICES

Ella Baker

Tex G. Hall

Raúl Yzaguirre

Margaret Fung

11 SISTERS IN THE STRUGGLE: Reflections on Black Women’s Activism by Gayle T. Tate

12 INDIAN VOTERS: Awakening a Sovereign Capacity by David E. Wilkins (Lumbee) and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe)

13 LATINO VOTERS: Lessons Learned and Misunderstood by Louis DeSipio

14 ASIAN AMERICAN VOTERS: A Challenging Diversity by Pei-te Lien

PART FIVE ADVANCING THE AGENDA

15 KEEPING THE PROMISE: Why Voting Still Matters by Theodore M. Shaw and Debo P. Adegbile

16 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?: A Vision for a New Black Politics by Manning Marable

TIMELINE OF CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY

THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965, SECTIONS 1 THROUGH 11

NOTES

CONTRIBUTORS

INDEX

PREFACE

Reflecting on The Unfinished Agenda of the Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March

DARA N. Byrne and William E.COX

As we were putting the final touches on our first book in the Landmarks in Civil Rights History series, The Unfinished Agenda of Brown v. Board of Education, it became very clear that a book on the rise of civil disobedience needed to follow. So The Unfinished Agenda of the Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March was born. We asked the contributors to examine how the voices in the freedom struggle became louder and louder until they were heard, not only in the South, but in the nation’s capital and then in every corner of this nation.

In the decade after the Brown decision, lawyers continued attacking Jim Crow in the courts. But efforts by the Department of Justice lacked the coercive capabilities necessary to make real progress toward guaranteeing civil rights. The pictures on the pages of newspapers and on television screens at home and around the world grew ugly. Demonstrating for equal access and opportunity in a free society that they had helped to build and defend, black men and women were being beaten with clubs and chains. Our children were being chased by dogs. Soldiers had to guard the doors of schools and colleges to protect black students from angry mobs. Fire hoses were turned on peaceful demonstrators. Yet each despicable act seemed to add fuel to the movement.

No outrage brought more support for the aims of the civil rights movement than the brutality during the Alabama march from Selma to Montgomery. What had started out as a local voter registration campaign quickly became a national symbol. Deploring the bloodshed, Congress passed the most significant civil rights landmark of our time, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, vindicating the marchers and protecting the right of all Americans to vote, regardless of race or color.

Four decades later we can finally measure the full importance of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. This book represents the views of experts who have examined the march and its aftermath from myriad perspectives. The result is a powerful testament to the men, women, and children who put their lives in jeopardy for our fundamental freedoms. And, above all, the book provides a much-needed, thorough examination of what must yet be done now to protect them.

Truthfully, The Unfinished Agenda is a disciplined read. The editors and contributors have put forth some very challenging and grounded discussions with you in mind. Some educate, some motivate, and some agitate.

Part one serves as a snapshot of the era. In the voices of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Lyndon Baines Johnson, Reverend Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), and Congressman John Lewis, then a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the climate and culture of civil disobedience come alive. Standing on the front lines of the struggle, these leaders had a sense of purpose that was remarkable. Later in the book, you will also hear from Ambassador Andrew Young and former president Bill Clinton, pioneer freedom fighter Ella Baker, Margaret Fung of the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, and others who remind us of the deep convictions underlying the Selma protest.

Clayborne Carson, head of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, provides a brief primer on the movement. Carson shows how SNCC, comprised of young people, many just out of their teens, galled authorities by persuading farm workers and field hands to risk their lives to register to vote. Eventually, on the foundation of these personal acts of persistence and courage, some twenty-five thousand people, black and white, mounted the historic mass march.

Now, as we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of that achievement, it is evident that the right to vote cannot be taken for granted. This is an unfinished agenda. Despite the gains made in 1965, there is no certainty in 2005 that all Americans, much less all people of color in the United States, have equal access to the polls or equal representation under law. Those assumptions are highly dubious, as the rest of this book proves.

In part two, Ronald Walters surveys black voter registration trends and demonstrates that, after the march and contrary to popular belief, blacks almost immediately played an increasingly pivotal role in elections. Why then, he asks, are black issues marginalized? Carol Swain argues that partisan matters strongly influence the true power of the minority vote. Kenny J. Whitby builds on the arguments put forth by Walters and Swain. His essay draws on statistical evidence to demonstrate that the race of legislative officials matters more in Congress than the party does. According to Whitby, black lawmakers are more likely to champion community-enhancing public policies than lawmakers from other racial groups, regardless of party.

In part three we see how racial bloc voting is characteristic of America’s democracy. Keith Reeves sees a positive spin emerging. He discusses the historical difficulties of black candidates who have attempted to campaign across the color line, and he suggests that coalition politics, exemplified by Illinois senator Barack Obama, is the most promising election strategy for future black candidates.

On the other hand, some experts put forth an urgent call for a pro-democracy movement that will force lawmakers to make good on the promise of one vote, one value. The disenfranchisement of black, Jewish, and Hispanic voters in Florida in the 2000 presidential election and in the outcome of the Bush v. Gore case signaled a return to grassroots political agitation aimed at reinstating the most basic of our democratic principles. In the face of that mandate, Jamie Fellner and Marc Mauer’s chapter calls your attention to the impact of felony disenfranchisement, what they describe as the biggest affront to democratic ideals today. Fellner and Mauer’s statement on felony rights is short and to the point, and their statistics are disturbing.

Part four highlights the deep interconnection between African American voters and other Americans of color. The Black Issues editorial team reached out to scholars representing diverse communities engaged in parallel struggles. Gayle Tate, David E. Wilkins (Lumbee), Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), Louis DeSipio, and Pei-te Lien discuss ongoing lessons and triumphs, and provide us with hope that meaningful alliances will be forged in the near future.

Part five, the final section of the book, asks important questions about youth leadership today and explores priorities and strategies for the next generation. Theodore M. Shaw and Debo P. Adegbile of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund recount a candid discussion with a high school student about why voting still matters. Read closely as Shaw and Adegbile artfully persuade her.

Manning Marable’s chapter closes this book in the most poignant of ways. By asking Where do we go from here? Marable effectively redefines who we are and who we ought to be to ignite political change.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors of these essays are to be commended for their thoughtful treatment of a subject that historians have been trying to capture for decades. They have written from their knowledge of the times and from their hearts. These messages need to be read again and again and become the subject of history lessons for the young.

I acknowledge the contributors and thank them for their scholarly and heartfelt support of this series. Like the men and women who marched from Selma to Montgomery, their voices have been heard.

This series continues with the hard work, dedication, and keen intellect of Dara Byrne, and with the expert leadership and guidance of none other than Carole Hall and Adrienne Ingrum. Thank you for the long hours spent keeping The Dream alive.

William E. Cox

INTRODUCTION

Selma to Montgomery: An Unfinished Agenda

TAVIS SMILEY

In the South, voting used to be a whites-only affair. In 1955, a black farmer in Mississippi was shot to death in broad daylight in front of a county courthouse for trying to get Negroes to vote. No one was ever arrested. In 1964, although twelve million out of sixteen million African Americans lived in the South, less than 10 percent of them could vote. Southern states controlled all the mechanisms for enforcing federal laws. So it’s not a matter of conjecture on my part that those states ignored the Supreme Court and the U.S. Constitution. They did.

The civil rights movement kept alive the struggle for equal protection under the law. In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. brought his organization to Selma, Alabama, where college students and grassroots leaders were waging a dogged voter registration campaign.

Writing from jail after his arrest in a Selma mass protest, King observed sharply: In Selma, Ala., thousands of Negroes are courageously providing dramatic witness to the evil forces that bar our way to the all-important ballot box. They are laying bare for all the nation to see, for all the world to know, the nature of segregationist resistance.

On Sunday, March 7, six hundred brave souls assembled by the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a sixty-five mile protest march to the state capitol in Montgomery. State troopers cut them down with tear gas, whips, and clubs. A shocked nation watched on television. The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, changed the destiny of black America, and, for that matter, America itself. The Constitution stopped being something the South could ignore. By March 21, some four thousand protesters left Selma, headed to Montgomery again. Violence continued, but more people kept coming. By the time they reached Montgomery on March 25, they were more than twenty-five thousand strong.

On August 6, under pressure from Lyndon Johnson’s White House, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) ending the South’s Gestapo-like control of the polls.

The Unfinished Voting Rights Agenda

Flash forward to today. The VRA is coming up for renewal in 2007. A national conversation about what this means, and what is at stake, is already underway. This book comes in handy to help you analyze why. Why, for example, do experts believe further reform is needed? What is the history behind the voting rights struggle? What are the implications of the 2000 and 2004 elections? In addition to cutting-edge research data, this book offers classic views and thought-provoking insights from leading opinion-makers on the contemporary political scene.

The editors of Black Issues in Higher Education challenge the assumption that voting rights are something simplistic that we can take for granted. If you think the fact that your vote fulfills your total obligation to the people who struggled for you to have that right, think again. If you think that voting reform is someone else’s business and not yours, think again.

In my view, there are three main reasons. Each is a reason to read this fascinating book.

Number One: The Freedom Struggle Is Not Over Yet

When you boil everything else down, what the movement was about was access. In fact, throughout U.S. history, the black freedom struggle has been about access—to opportunity, jobs, education, decent housing, and the ballot. By 1965, most activists agreed that access to the ballot was the last major bridge to cross in the struggle. Ironically, one measure of the movement’s success is that in my generation the phrase freedom struggle doesn’t mean much anymore. Quite frankly, I don’t even hear the word freedom used these days, except in foreign affairs.

Like most Americans, we take for granted that here at home we have rights and guarantees because we have access to opportunities. Black folk today are legitimately primarily focused on economic and social rights, what I call silver rights, not civil rights. For example, you don’t find members of my generation—forget about people who are younger than me—rushing to attend the annual conventions of civil rights organizations. But if you want a reservation at a hotel when our black professional organizations come to town, you better book a year early.

Whenever I think about that phenomenon, I have to say, whoa, not so fast. Civil rights and silver rights are not disconnected. We may be in the vanguard where our economic pursuits are concerned, but if we’re not careful, we’ll lose sight of what really matters. Racism continues to be the most intractable and divisive issue in America. Civil rights led to silver rights. The civil rights movement made a down payment on the opportunities we have today. Now, forty years later, it is our turn to make the payments on the mortgage for generations of black youth who are yet unborn.

My particular generation also tends to assume that our voting rights are cemented in stone, which is not the case. As I’ve said, we make these assumptions based on the access we have. For all that it did do, however, the VRA did not do enough. It guaranteed blacks the right to vote without intimidation, not that everyone would or could vote, or that every vote would count. The VRA gave us access to the ballot. It did not guarantee that that we would get fair or adequate representation. The VRA gave us access. It did not guarantee us justice or accountability.

Forty years ago, Bloody Sunday provided a visual image of injustice that America had to face, that it had to see. That moment could not be ignored. Fast-forward to the election of 2000 and the disenfranchisement of voters in Florida and beyond, and notice the difference in the nation’s attention. One could argue that the outrage wasn’t as great, and one would be right. But what’s important and what’s lost is that we are still talking about access to the polls.

This book is an excellent argument for ceaseless vigilance and activism. As Dr. King said in his letter from a Selma jail, one of the most difficult lessons of the movement was that you cannot depend on American institutions to function without pressure; real change depends on continued creative action.

Number Two: We Have to Make Democracy Work for More People

Before the passage of the VRA, Dr. King quipped that the Negro in the South could not vote, and the Negro in the North had nothing for which to vote. In an interesting way, the point he was making about the disenfranchisement of the black vote then applies to voters in general now, albeit across regions and races. It’s an American issue. It’s too easy to dismiss Americans who don’t value or take advantage of their right to vote as being stuck on stupid. Maybe they’re brighter than the rest of us. I don’t accept it, but especially after election 2000,I do understand how people think that our democracy is dysfunctional and are just turned off by the entire process.

What’s left for the rest of us to do is to give the doubters a reason to believe, a reason to hope. A Bible passage that most blacks are familiar with says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. If one believed that, then one could always be hopeful, even when there was not evidence to suggest there was anything to be optimistic about. This theological view was at the center of what defined and sustained the civil rights movement, and it helps explain why so many of us continue to vote and fight to safeguard our rights today.

We always have to be hopeful.

In this regard, I think Selma-Montgomery is especially instructive. Forty years ago, there was a unified black agenda based on the issues of the day. Now, I am not suggesting that we had unanimity then or that we need to be a monolith today. But there has to be an agenda so that we can hold