{"id":53282,"date":"2012-09-07T08:42:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T08:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=53282"},"modified":"2012-09-07T08:42:35","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T08:42:35","slug":"americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"America’s Voter Suppression, Then And Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0David W. Blight\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

New Haven<\/p>\n

SUPPRESSING the black vote is a very old story in America, and it has never been just a Southern thing.<\/p>\n

In 1840, and again in 1841, the former Frederick Bailey, now\u00a0Frederick Douglass, walked a few blocks from his rented apartment on Ray Street in New Bedford, Mass., to the town hall, where he paid a local\u00a0tax\u00a0of $1.50 to register to vote. Born a slave on\u00a0Maryland\u2019s Eastern Shore in 1818, Douglass escaped in an epic journey on trains and ferry boats, first to\u00a0New York City, and then to the whaling port of New Bedford in 1838.<\/p>\n

By the mid-1840s, he had emerged as one of the greatest orators and writers in American history. But legally, Douglass began his public life by committing what today we would consider voter fraud, using an assumed name.<\/p>\n

It was a necessary step: when he registered to vote under his new identity, \u201cDouglass<\/a>,\u201d a name he took from Sir Walter Scott\u2019s 1810 epic poem\u00a0\u00a0this fugitive slave was effectively an illegal immigrant inMassachusetts. He was still the legal \u201cproperty\u201d of Thomas Auld, his owner in St. Michaels, Md., and susceptible, under the federal fugitive slave law, to capture and return to slavery at any time.<\/p>\n

It was a risky move. If required, the only identification Douglass could give the registrar may have been his address in the town directory. He possessed two pieces of paper, which would only have endangered him more. One was a fraudulent \u201cSeaman\u2019s Protection Paper,\u201d which he had borrowed inBaltimore\u00a0from a retired free black sailor named Stanley, who was willing to support the young man\u2019s escape.<\/p>\n

The second was a brief three-line certification of his marriage to Anna Murray, his free black fianc\u00e9e, who joined him in New York just after his escape. A black minister, James Pennington, himself a former fugitive slave, married them, but on the document he called them Mr. and Mrs.\u00a0Douglass was at least the fourth name Frederick had used to distract the authorities on his quest for freedom. He once remarked that a fugitive slave had to adopt various names to survive because \u201camong honest men an honest man may well be content with one name \u2026 but toward fugitives, Americans are not honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should this fugitive, who had committed the crime of stealing his own freedom and living under false identities, have been allowed to vote? Voting reforms in recent decades had broadened the franchise to include men who did not hold property but certainly not to anyone who was property.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Douglass, at the time Massachusetts was one of only five Northern states that allowed\u00a0suffrage for \u201cfree\u201d blacks<\/a>\u00a0(the others wereVermont,\u00a0Maine,\u00a0New Hampshire\u00a0and\u00a0Rhode Island).<\/p>\n

Blacks in many other states weren\u2019t so lucky. Aside from Maine, every state that entered the Union after 1819 excluded them from voting. Four Northern states \u2014 New York,\u00a0Ohio,\u00a0Indiana\u00a0and\u00a0Wisconsin\u00a0\u2014 had reaffirmed earlier black voter exclusion laws by the early 1850s. A few blacks actually voted in New York, but only if they could pass a stiff property qualification. The sheer depth of racism at the base of this story is remarkable, since in no Northern state at the time, except\u00a0New Jersey, did blacks constitute more than 2 percent of the population.<\/p>\n

We do not know when Douglass cast his first vote. It might have been in 1840, in the famous \u201clog cabin and hard cider\u201d campaign mounted by the Whig Party for its candidate, Gen. William Henry Harrison. If so, he likely supported the Liberty Party\u2019s\u00a0James G. Birney<\/a>, who represented the first genuinely antislavery party, however small, in American history; it achieved some strength in the Bay State.<\/p>\n

In 1848 he spoke at the national convention of the newly formed Freesoil Party, and after 1854, haltingly at first and later wholeheartedly, he joined and worked for the new antislavery coalition known as the\u00a0Republican Party, which ran and elected\u00a0Abraham Lincoln\u00a0in 1860. To this day, that \u201cGrand Old Party\u201d still calls itself the \u201cparty of Lincoln\u201d and still claims Frederick Douglass as one of its black founders.<\/p>\n

And indeed Douglass saw himself as a founder of that party, but only many years after a group of English antislavery friends purchased his freedom in 1846 for \u00a3150 ($711 at the time in American dollars). Douglass was in the midst of a triumphal two-year speaking tour of\u00a0Ireland,\u00a0Scotland\u00a0andEngland; when he returned to America in 1847, he moved to New York in possession of his official \u201cmanumission papers.\u201d He was free and legal, eventually owned property and could vote. Valued and purchased as a commodity, he could now claim to be a citizen.<\/p>\n

In Douglass\u2019s greatest speech, the Fourth of July\u00a0oration<\/a>\u00a0in 1852, he argued that often the only way to describe American hypocrisy about race was with \u201cscorching irony,\u201d \u201cbiting ridicule\u201d and \u201cwithering sarcasm.\u201d Today\u2019s Republican Party seems deeply concerned with rooting out voter fraud of the kind Douglass practiced. So, with Douglass\u2019s story as background, I have a modest proposal for it. In the 23 states where Republicans have either enacted voter-ID laws or shortened early voting hours in urban districts, and consistent with their current reigning ideology, they should adopt a simpler strategy of voter suppression.<\/p>\n

To those potentially millions of young, elderly, brown and black registered voters who, despite no evidence of voter fraud, they now insist must obtain government ID, why not merely offer money? Pay them not to vote. Give each a check for $711 in honor of Frederick Douglass. Buy their \u201cfreedom,\u201d and the election. Call it the \u201cFrederick Douglass Voter Voucher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Give people a choice: take the money and just not vote, or travel miles without easy transportation to obtain a driver\u2019s license they do not need. It\u2019s their \u201cliberty\u201d; let them decide how best to use it. Perhaps they will forget their history as much as the Republican Party seems to wish the nation would.<\/p>\n

Such an offer would be only a marginal expense for a \u201csuper PAC\u201d \u2014 plus a bit more to cover the lawyers needed to prove it legal under federal election law \u2014 and no one would have to know who paid for this generous effort to stop fraud. Once and for all, the right can honestly declare what the\u00a0Supreme Court\u00a0has allowed it to practice: that voters are commodities, not citizens.<\/p>\n

And, if the Republican Party wins the election in November, this plan will give it a splendid backdrop for next year\u2019s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of its great founder\u2019s\u00a0Emancipation Proclamation.<\/p>\n

Courtesy New York Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":53283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,3402],"tags":[4446,4448,4447,4445],"class_list":["post-53282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-editors-choice","tag-americas-voter-suppression","tag-history-of-americas-voter-suppression","tag-if-the-republican-party-wins-the-election-in-november","tag-suppressing-the-black-vote-is-a-very-old-story-in-america"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica's Voter Suppression, Then And Now - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"America's Voter Suppression, Then And Now - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-09-07T08:42:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"401\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/\",\"name\":\"America's Voter Suppression, Then And Now - Colombo Telegraph\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-09-07T08:42:35+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/9db3d0cfcfa59e1997e3c3524d454cb3\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg\",\"width\":\"640\",\"height\":\"401\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"America’s Voter Suppression, Then And Now\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/\",\"name\":\"Colombo Telegraph\",\"description\":\"In journalism truth is a process\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/9db3d0cfcfa59e1997e3c3524d454cb3\",\"name\":\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/920b3181b0bf86b5c339ad9f0963a89f6a8b19c4b971e629987a021ba7a663df?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/920b3181b0bf86b5c339ad9f0963a89f6a8b19c4b971e629987a021ba7a663df?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/author\/colombo_telegraph\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"America's Voter Suppression, Then And Now - Colombo Telegraph","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"America's Voter Suppression, Then And Now - Colombo Telegraph","og_description":"[…]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/","og_site_name":"Colombo Telegraph","article_published_time":"2012-09-07T08:42:35+00:00","og_image":[{"width":640,"height":401,"url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/","url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/","name":"America's Voter Suppression, Then And Now - Colombo Telegraph","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg","datePublished":"2012-09-07T08:42:35+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/9db3d0cfcfa59e1997e3c3524d454cb3"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg","width":"640","height":"401"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/americas-voter-suppression-then-and-now\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"America’s Voter Suppression, Then And Now"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/","name":"Colombo Telegraph","description":"In journalism truth is a process","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/9db3d0cfcfa59e1997e3c3524d454cb3","name":"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/920b3181b0bf86b5c339ad9f0963a89f6a8b19c4b971e629987a021ba7a663df?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/920b3181b0bf86b5c339ad9f0963a89f6a8b19c4b971e629987a021ba7a663df?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH"},"url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/author\/colombo_telegraph\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/MLK_tshirt-thumb.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53284,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53282\/revisions\/53284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}