For Blacks, Nov. 7 Carries Taint of 1960s Injustices
By HECTOR TOBAR, MIKE CLARY, Times Staff Writers
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--The day Condoleezza Rice's smiling
visage graced the front pages of both daily newspapers here this
week should have been, by all rights, a day of celebration at
Westminster Presbyterian Church.
President-elect George W. Bush had just named Rice his
national security advisor. People here remember her as the girl who played inside the church where both her father and grandfather served as pastors. Now "Condi" is about to become one of the most powerful black women in American history. So how to explain the gloom on the face of the current pastor, William T. Jones, when asked to comment about the local girl who made good?
"Yeah, she's intelligent," Jones offered grudgingly. But what about the election that made Bush president in the first place?
What about all those students who tried to vote at Florida A&M--a traditionally black college--only to be turned away?
And what about the U.S. Supreme Court?
"Brother, a lot of people have lost faith in that court," the pastor said. "What they did just wasn't fair."
Even here in Birmingham, a city with family ties to both of
Bush's most prominent black appointees--Rice and secretary of State-designate Colin L. Powell--many African Americans have a sick feeling in their stomach about a Bush presidency.
For more than a month, they've been hearing stories about
election day shenanigans--dark tales about missing ballot boxes and
suspicious highway checkpoints--all seemingly part of an effort to
keep blacks from voting for Al Gore.
Throw in the very public action of the U.S. Supreme
Court--compared by some to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott
decision that returned a slave to his master--and the 2000 election
adds up to an injustice of historic proportions in the eyes of many
blacks.
Bush Meets With Black Ministers
In a conciliatory gesture, Bush met with black ministers
Wednesday in Austin, Texas, as part of a summit with religious leaders. Among those attending were the Rev. Floyd Flake of Queens, N.Y., a former Democratic congressman and a strong Gore backer.
Gore won nine of every 10 black votes nationwide in last
month's election, according to exit polls. Whites leaned strongly
toward Bush.
And last week, a poll by Harvard University's Shorenstein
Center found that 90% of African Americans thought the results
were unfair, compared with 60% for whites. The same poll found
that 77% of black voters believe Bush is undeserving of the
presidency, compared with 37% of the electorate as a whole.
"There are two lessons here," said professor Tom Patterson,
director of the Vanishing Voter Project, a Harvard-based program
to monitor the American electorate. "The first is that every vote
counts. And the second is that some votes don't count at all."
That mixed message could translate into lower turnout of black
and other minority voters in the next election, Patterson said. "A
third of African American voters say they are angry and have less
intention to vote for president in 2004," he said. "They are
frustrated, resentful and feel they have little or no impact on the
election outcome."
The result of this year's chaotic election has been an especially
hard pill to swallow in Southern cities like Birmingham, where
blacks have paid with blood for the right to enjoy the privileges of
their citizenship.
"For somebody in the year 2000 to come up and say your vote
doesn't count is a slap in the face," said 51-year-old Eugene Jones,
owner of the Talk of the Town barbershop here. "I feel kind of
disappointed in the system right now."
As a teenager, Jones heard civil rights leaders Martin Luther
King Jr. and Fred L. Shuttlesworth speak at his high school, urging
resistance to segregation. A few blocks away from his shop is the
16th Street Baptist Church, where four girls were killed in an
infamous 1963 bombing. (Rice was a schoolmate of one of the
victims.) Two men named as suspects in the case lived as free men
for 37 years until being charged in the case last May.
Now, after a month of listening to the television in his shop
drone with news of election irregularities in Florida, Jones sees
another conspiracy at work. Powerful men are working behind the
scenes, he says, to deprive a people of their right to vote.
"Most white Americans don't see the connections," he said.
"Most black people who come to this barbershop, they see the
game."
Jones' 27-year-old assistant, Shah Jahan Smith, chimed in with
one of the rumors he's heard while cutting hair, "stories of folks
eating ballots, swallowing ballots" so they wouldn't be counted.
"And state troopers stopping folks so they can't go to the polls,"
Jones added. "I thought that was crazy."
The Florida Highway Patrol did, in fact, set up a checkpoint on
the road leading to a polling place at a Baptist church outside of
Tallahassee. Blacks made up about one-third of the voters in that
precinct. The troopers, officials said, were checking for licenses
and proof of insurance--oblivious to the fact that people were
casting ballots nearby.They gave tickets to eight white drivers and
five black drivers.
In the weeks since, what under different circumstances might
have been a little-noticed local story has circulated around the
country--thanks in part to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has
denounced it as a new twist on racial profiling.
The Tallahassee roadblock has joined a litany of election day
irregularities, foul-ups and allegations of intimidation in black
communities across the South.
In Miami, a massive effort to get black first-time and elderly
voters to the polls early bogged down when the election
department was unprepared for the hundreds of people who turned
out.
Within hours of the Nov. 7 vote, the National Assn. for the
Advancement of Colored People, the Lawyers Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law and other Florida groups had asked the U.S.
Justice Department to investigate. Those groups have since
compiled hundreds of interviews with voters who said they were
denied their rights.
Among the charges: lack of translators to give instructions to
Spanish- and Creole-speaking voters; polling places closed early or
moved; voter intimidation by groups of men outside the polling
places.
"We had so many people turned away," said Ketha Otis, who
shuttled voters to the polls as part of Operation Big Vote, run by
Miami labor and civic organizations. "What I saw was election
workers ill-prepared to handle the overwhelming number of people
who turned out."
Poll Workers Allegedly Wearing Badges
Similar charges have been made by black leaders in Atlanta, St.
Louis and Jacksonville, Fla.
In South Carolina, Democratic officials
filed a complaint with federal authorities, saying some Republican
poll workers were wearing badges shaped liked police shields and
were challenging black voters in Charleston and Sumter counties.
Republicans there have denied any wrongdoing.
Such allegations are especially chilling to Birmingham residents
like Pearly Fields, a saleswoman at the Cotton's Department Store
here. They are echoes of the days when blacks first tried to vote in
the 1960s.
"When I first voted, I had to go before a white man at the
courthouse and pass an interview," Fields said. "He asked me if I
was married, how many kids I had. You had to take a test to vote."
Black politicians here and elsewhere say that the events of this
year's presidential race in Florida are not uncommon in hard-fought
elections in African American communities, especially in the South.
"I believe that what happened in Florida is just the tip of the
iceberg," said William A. Bell, president of the Birmingham City
Council.
"The Republican Party has been doing this all around the
country. They have a systematic way of harassing African American
voters and senior citizens in election after election."
Last year, Bell lost the race for mayor here by less than 200
votes. The election foreshadowed, on a much smaller scale, the
controversy in Florida--with both candidates charging that poll
workers were turning away their voters.
Bell did not challenge the final result, however. And now he is
urging his constituents to accept Bush as president too.
"We know he got there by circumstances that were not at all
aboveboard," he said. "But once he's president, he's president for
everyone."
At Westminster Presbyterian, church administrator John
Chadwell isn't so willing to make amends.
"They didn't let the votes get counted," said Chadwell, a
registered independent. "I won't get over that, ever. . . . For a man
to assume an office that high, the way he did, and then talk about
reconciliation--that doesn't wash with me."
* * *
Tobar reported from Birmingham and Clary from Miami.
From: The Los Angeles Times
latimes.com |
