Ralph Ellison immortalized "Juneteenth," the
annual celebration of the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when
the enslaved Africans in Texas were actually emancipated, in
his posthumous novel of the same name.
Ellison's title refers to the date when Union
General Gordon Grander rode horseback into Galveston, Texas and
announced to nearly 250,000 slaves that President Abraham Lincoln,
with a stroke of a pen on the Emancipation Proclamation, had
declared them free on January 1, 1863 – more than two years earlier.
Upon hearing the news, the reaction of the newly
freed slaves wasn't surprising: they dropped their plows
and celebrated their freedom.
In reality, however, the Emancipation Proclamation
did not free any slaves, its terms were carefully limited to
those areas under the control of the Confederacy and thus beyond
the reach of federal law.
Indeed, it wasn't until 2 ½ years after
the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, when a regiment
of the Union military, led by Granger, arrived in Texas with
the news of slavery's end, and the power to enforce the proclamation,
that Lincoln's proclamation finally made slaves free. This
delay, Ellison said, is a "symbolic acknowledgement that
liberation is a never-ending task of self, group and nation."
Today, Juneteenth is a vivid historical example
that obtaining rights at law does not necessarily confer rights
that have actual force. It is for this reason that Juneteenth
celebrants are often conflicted.
On one hand, Juneteenth marks the Republicans'
critical recognition that unless action was taken to safeguard
the freedmen's status, Democrats would force Blacks back into
slavery, thereby sustaining the economic dispute that led to
Civil War. In recognition of the entrenched white resistance
to Black emancipation, the post-Civil War Congress enacted the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which ended
slavery, made former slaves citizens, and protected them from
future white supremacy by granting them the right to vote free
of racial discrimination.
On the other hand, Juneteenth marks the time when
the newly enfranchised Black population in the South met massive
resistance from whites. Among other things, this resistance
took the form of a century of poll taxes, grandfather clauses,
literacy requirements, and disfranchisement policies.
The struggle continued with the passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 and now many, but not all, barriers
used to prevent Blacks from the effective use of their votes
are unconstitutional or illegal. One vestige of slavery,
however, endures: felon disfranchisement laws.
Felon disfranchisement laws are state statutes
that prohibit people with felony convictions from voting. In
an attempt to prevent newly-freed Blacks from voting after the
Civil War, many state legislators tailored their felon disfranchisement
laws to require the loss of voting rights only for those offenses
committed mostly by Blacks.
For example, the 1890 Mississippi constitutional
convention required disfranchisement for such crimes as theft,
burglary and receiving money under false pretenses, but not for
robbery or murder. These intentionally discriminatory laws
were guided by the belief that Blacks engaged in crime were more
likely to commit furtive offenses than the more robust crimes
committed by whites. Through the convoluted "reasoning" of
this provision, one would be disfranchised for stealing a chicken,
but not for killing the chicken's owner. Many other states,
from New York to Alabama, have also intentionally and effectively
utilized felon disfranchisement laws to prevent Blacks
and other racial minorities from voting.
Not surprisingly, felon disfranchisement statutes,
as intended, have served to disproportionately weaken the voting
power of Black and Latino communities. This disparate effect
results largely from the disproportionate enforcement of the "war
on drugs" in Black and Latino communities, which has expanded
exponentially the class of persons subject to disfranchisement.
Today, with nearly 2.1 million Americans incarcerated,
the effects of our nation's reliance on mass incarceration as
a primary means of control in the era of the "war on drugs" is
more profound than ever. As a result, 4.65 million Americans
nationwide – an overwhelming number of whom are Black and Latino – are
disfranchised. Nowhere are the effects of felon disfranchisement
more prominent than in the Black community, where 1.4 million
Black males, or 13 percent of the adult Black population, are
disfranchised.
The felon disfranchisement phenomenon is most
destructive in Black and Latino neighborhoods because these communities
are often disproportionately plagued with numerous socioeconomic
ills – including concentrated poverty and substandard housing,
healthcare and education. As a result, people in these
communities have even less of an opportunity to effect positive
change through the political process.
Not only this, but felon disfranchisement laws
also serve to discourage eligible and future voters from exercising
the learned behavior of voting. In doing so, these laws
create a culture of political nonparticipation that erodes civic
engagement and marginalizes the votes and voices of community
members who remain engaged, but who are deprived of the collective
power of the votes of disfranchised relatives and neighbors.
Although common in the United States, felon disfranchisement
statutes are not a necessary feature of our participatory democracy. Indeed,
Maine and Vermont have no such statutes and permit all people
with felony convictions – including those both currently incarcerated
and formerly incarcerated – to vote. Some states restore
voting rights to formerly incarcerated persons once they have
served their entire prison sentence. But similar to the
slaves in Texas, many formerly incarcerated persons are not informed
that their voting rights have been restored, and although technically
free to vote, remain voteless. In other states, the difficulty
of navigating one's way through the impenetrable restoration
process turns many eligible, formerly incarcerated voters away.
Unfortunately, more than a century after General
Granger announced to the slaves in Texas that they were free,
and nearly 40 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, increasing numbers of Blacks and Latinos nationwide
are losing their voting rights daily.
Today, there are new frontiers for the expansion
of civil rights, and old battles that remain unfinished. Reform
of felon disfranchisement laws is long overdue.
Ellison remarked that "there've been a heap
of Juneteenths gone by and there'll be a heap more before we're
free." 140 Juneteenth anniversaries certainly constitutes
a "heap." In the spirit of Juneteenth's legacy, and
in the interest of experiencing the illusive freedom that Ellison
referenced, it is time for the United States to break down the
walls that literally lock citizens out of the political process
so that next Juneteenth we can move one step closer to truly
celebrating freedom.
Ryan Paul Haygood is an Assistant Counsel
at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). Click
here to contact Mr. Haygood. |