As shocking as these expulsions
were to many, America has a long history of
removing Black lawmakers from office, quelling
dissent and subverting the will of the voters —
all for the sake of raw power, resisting
demographic change and maintaining White
dominance through antidemocratic and dictatorial
means.
During the Reconstruction era
following the Civil War, 2,000
Black public officials served throughout the
country, with 600 elected officials in state
legislatures and 16 in Congress. The 1868 South
Carolina legislature was the first in the
nation with a Black majority. In Mississippi, a state where the formerly
enslaved outnumbered White people, the 1868
state constitution was one of the first to
establish free public education for children
without regard to race.
Ultimately, across the South,
Black political power was erased by White
pro-Confederate mob violence — with 35
Black officials murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and
others — and White constitutional conventions
designed to eviscerate Black rights, eliminate
Black political leadership and uphold the
segregationist power structure.
In Georgia, 33
Black lawmakers were expelled from the
General Assembly for being Black. White
Democrats in control of the Assembly declared
that the 1868 election won by Republican Gov.
Rufus Bullock was fraudulent and illegitimate, and that
the new state constitution did not grant the
Black legislators the right
to hold office. They further argued that
formerly enslaved Black people had no right to
vote. Known as the “Original 33,” 24 of the
expelled lawmakers were ministers.
“Never, in the history of the
world, has a man been arraigned before a body
clothed with legislative, judicial or executive
functions, charged with the offense of being a
darker hue than his fellow men,” said one of the
expelled, Rep.
Henry McNeal Turner, on the floor of the
legislature. An ordained minister in the African
Methodist Episcopal Church, Turner questioned if
this was an exclusively White man’s legislature.
“I hold that I am a member of
this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn
nor cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg
them for my rights,” Turner said. “You may expel
us, gentlemen, but I firmly believe that you
will some day repent it,” he declared, adding
that Black men should not protect a country that
failed to protect them. “Never lift a finger nor
raise a hand in defense of Georgia, until
Georgia acknowledges that you are men and
invests you with the rights pertaining to
manhood,” Turner added.
Ultimately, the Georgia
legislators successfully lobbied the federal
government for reinstatement. Nonetheless, one-quarter of these men faced
blowback ranging from threats and imprisonment
to beatings and assassination. White
supremacists reclaimed Georgia through a regime
of KKK terror. Ultimately, the campaign of
intimidation and Democratic victories in the
1870 election eroded Black representation and
power.
Across many states, white
supremacists ushered in the end of Black elected
representation through Jim Crow
authoritarianism. In majority-Black Mississippi,
the 1890
constitutional convention — of which 133
of 134 delegates were White — adopted a new
state constitution with a poll tax and literacy
test, designed to disenfranchise Black voters.
Black people have not held elected
statewide office in Mississippi since 1890.
The last remaining Black
congressman who had been elected during
Reconstruction was George H. White of North
Carolina. White chose not to run for reelection,
as voter suppression and the disenfranchisement
of Black voters undermined his chances of
victory. The only Black member of the body, he
gave his farewell
address on Jan. 29, 1901: “This is
perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the
American Congress, but let me say, Phoenixlike
he will rise up some day and come again. These
parting words are in behalf of an outraged,
heartbroken, bruised and bleeding, but
God-fearing people; faithful, industrious,
loyal, rising people — full of potential force.”
Congress would not have another Black member
until 1929 with the election of Rep.
Oscar S. De Priest of Illinois.
The troubling practice of
targeting democratically elected officials
continued into the 20th century, even after the
passage of federal legislation such as the 1964
Civil Rights and 1965 Voting Rights acts. In
January 1966 — a century after the Original 33
were expelled in Georgia — the Georgia House of
Representatives refused to seat civil rights
activist Julian Bond because he opposed the
Vietnam War. Bond, who was the public relations
director of the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, had endorsed a committee
statement condemning the war and spoken out in
support of other forms of resistance to the war.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a demonstration at the state Capitol in
Atlanta to protest the refusal to seat Bond.
The U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that December that
Georgia unconstitutionally excluded Bond for
exercising his First Amendment rights, and Bond
was seated the following month. “The manifest
function of the First Amendment in a
representative government requires that
legislators be given the widest latitude to
express their views on issues of policy …debate
on public issues should be uninhibited, robust,
and wide-open,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren
for the court.
Tennessee, in particular, has a
long-unaddressed history of racial violence.
After all, it was the state that gave birth to
the KKK. An angry White mob forced journalist
Ida B. Wells-Barnett to flee the state and
burned down her newspaper’s office for writing
about the lynching of Black men. King was
assassinated in Memphis while fighting for
sanitation workers.
And while Jones and Pearson have
been reappointed, Tennessee and other
Republican-controlled states are neutralizing
the power of Black elected officials and
enacting policies that aren’t responsive to the
public. Using their states as laboratories for
neo-Jim Crow policies, White reactionaries are
cementing power through gerrymandering and voter
suppression.
For example, the very blue city
of Nashville has no Democratic representation in
Congress because Republicans have carved up the
city and apportioned the pieces to Republican
districts.
The majority-White GOP
Mississippi legislature — in a state where
people of color are 44 percent of the population
— is creating a state-controlled court system
and police force in the majority-Black capital
of Jackson, amounting to a White takeover
of a Black municipality. Texas state officials
announced the takeover of the predominantly
Latino and Black Houston
Independent School District, the largest in the state,
without explanation and amid protesting parents.
Georgia’s GOP-dominated legislature is following
the lead of states such as Florida, Indiana,
Missouri and Pennsylvania and pushing a bill to
remove “woke prosecutors” such as Fulton County
District Attorney Fani Willis, who is
considering indicting former president Donald
Trump for crimes related to the 2020 election.
In contrast to their
predecessors, however, today’s white supremacist
politicians must contend with dwindling support
for policies that are deeply unpopular and
barbaric to the majority of people. And this
time, the majority of Americans rather than
solely Black people are being targeted for
punishment — through abortion bans, voter
suppression measures, anti-LGBT legislation,
book bans, history bans and refusals to pass
gun-control legislation. These do not even
reflect the will of much of the White
public.
An interracial coalition of
Americans can turn this around by working to
overturn White minority rule. “They tried to
kill democracy. They tried to expel the people’s
choice and the people’s vote. And they awakened
a sleeping giant,” Justin Pearson said after he
returned to the Tennessee House.
This commentary is also posted
on The
Washington Post.
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