- History has been hidden from Americans.

Our educational system intentionally disguises and obscures acts of terror that have taken place against the minority community to dissuade and discourage certain people from voting.

Voting is supposed to be a right granted to all citizens of age.

The 15th Amendment, declaring that the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

Currently, there are attempts in certain states to make voting more difficult.

For African-Americans, it reminds us of the long, dark history of terror that was enacted against us in the Jim Crow South and all throughout the United States.

There were lynchings, rapes, massacres, mass murders, intimidation and political collusion at the highest level to suppress the vote and deny voting rights to minorities.

Were you aware of the massacres and the brutality that took place to stop black and brown people from voting?

Well, we're going to discuss it today.

Hi, my name is Pastor Phillip Davis, the host of Courageous Conversations.

Joining me today on the show are Dr Terry Ann Jones.

She's a published author and the director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University.

Professor Sholomo Levy, professor of history at Northampton County College.

Sit tight, and we'll be right back.

Welcome to Courageous Conversation.

Well, Professor Levy, Dr Terry Ann Jones, thank you so much for being on the show today.

I believe this is such an important conversation because, you know, we're coming up on another election and of course, they come up every few years.

And when we begin to think about the history and the long, dark history of how our people have been treated, it's not a discussion that happens in the schools.

Right?

We're not being educated within the school systems.

And many times it's not talked about in our homes because of the trauma that is connected to this long, dark history that's a part of American history.

So let me jump right in, Doc.

Let me ask you a question.

When the Constitution of the United States was being written, what role did the founding fathers have as it relates to African-Americans?

- Yes.

Well, it's interesting that although the word African-American or black or slave was not mentioned in the Constitution, it was, in fact, the thing that they debated most vigorously about our democracy.

And that's because when James Madison, the fourth president and the primary architect of the Constitution, proposed creating a system of government based on proportional representation.

And this was new, because after the American Revolution, each state had one vote in Congress.

And so he thought it should be more proportional based on population.

And that meant that we had to count for the first time how many people lived in the United States by state.

And then the southern states proposed that they wanted to count the black population as part of the population of their states.

- Hmm.

- And this, you know, was a problem because since the 1680s, at least, they had considered black people property.

- Sure.

Sure.

- Not people.

So when they arrived 1690, they are people from Africa.

And then the laws of the United States legalizing slavery changed their status from people to property.

- Sure.

- So if they're your property, your slaves, how could you now count them as people for the purpose of representation?

- Yeah.

- And the reason they wanted to do this is counting black bodies would artificially increase the power of the South.

- They say somewhere between three and four million, right, were kind of in that space.

I don't want to misquote numbers.

- Yeah.

No, no.

- Well, take Virginia, for example.

So George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, - they're all Virginians.

- And all slave owners, too.

- And all slave owners.

And in the state of Virginia, enslaved people represented 40% of the population of the state of Virginia.

- Sure.

- More than 50% of the population of South Carolina and Mississippi.

So if you're just kind of thinking about doing the numbers, if you don't count the black population, then the power of those southern states would be 40% less, say, in Virginia, 50% less in and South Carolina.

Now, northerners, particularly people like Benjamin Franklin, who was president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, Alexander Hamilton, who was a member of the New York Manumission Society, and a man named Gouverneur Morris.

He wasn't the governor of Pennsylvania, but he was one of Pennsylvania's representatives to the constitutional convention.

He objected and he proposed an alternative plan that said that representation in Congress should be based on one congressman for every 40,000 free inhabitants.

- Wow.

- And so you had these competing plans and what ultimately got adopted and was in article one of the Constitution is to say that southern states can count three-fifths of... Basically the enslaved black population.

- Ergo the three-fifths compromise.

- Three-fifths compromise.

This is, you know, free white people, not counting whites, so three-fifths of all other people.

So if they're not white and they're not Indian, who are the "other people"?

And this is why I said it's kind of hidden in there.

The "other people" are black people.

- Right.

And let me, if I may, Doc, when you think about that three-fifths compromise and the impact of that, can you talk a little bit about maybe what the motivation behind that three-fifths compromise was, and how those who are in political power can make a decision about humanity in that way?

- Well, to sum it up, I think black people were simply excluded.

- Right.

- That was an exclusionary compromise, it wasn't something that was intended to make them a part of the conversation or a part of the political process in any way.

- Right.

It's amazing because, you know, the 15th Amendment came online, right, and that gives black folks the right to vote.

And I understand by about 1870, right, Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi is elected and Joseph Rainey of South Carolina.

And so we're now starting to see African-Americans, formerly enslaved, now breaking into the ranks of the hierarchy of America, if you will.

But after the Civil War, the 15th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote.

But what methods were taken to hinder black folks from voting?

Because I really want to get into this...

This movement of violence against the black community to suppress the vote.

So can you share with us?

- Voter suppression took place in a number of ways.

Violence was one tactic.

There were a number of massacres.

But then there were also other measures to deprive them of not just their political participation, but access to education, employment.

The black codes, for example, essentially required that black men work for white people.

And so someone who was self-employed, for instance, would be considered a vagrant and could be imprisoned on that basis.

So that, you know, when we think about contemporary black business ownership or any other form of self-employment, we have to reflect on that history and the fact that it was illegal for a black person to work for themselves.

- Amazing.

- Not only was it illegal, but they could then be auctioned to a white person who could pay whatever fine they were required to pay, and that trapped them in this debt cycle where they were then...

They would then have to pay off whatever debt they owed to this person.

And it really deprived them of any possibility of having an autonomous life.

Of course, through Jim Crow segregation, education was restricted, and then the political participation, there were so many ways in which they were deprived of this.

As I mentioned before, just flat-out violence - attacks, bombings, beatings, murders.

And also through other, I suppose, ways that they manufactured that could be thought of as legal, such as, you know, the taxation, right, to voter taxes, having them have to pay.

And what was even more egregious were the literacy tests.

Literacy tests, knowing that at that time the majority of the black population... - Were forbidden to read.

- ..was illiterate.

They were forbidden from literacy.

And of course, there were also illiterate whites, but they managed to get around that through the grandfather clause, which enabled anyone whose grandfather had been able to vote, granted them permission to vote.

Of course, black people's grandfathers could not have voted... - Amazing, yeah.

- ..during that time, so every mechanism was in place to prevent political participation among the black population.

- Yeah, thank you for that.

It's amazing the lengths that these folks were willing to go to to hold on to power and to suppress the vote, which is supposed to be a right, as written.

Doc, there were other things also - not only literacy tests, poll taxes and things of that nature.

What other kind of things did the powers that be, if you will, exercise to suppress our vote?

- Right, well, I think it's important to note the transition that's taken place here, because we started talking about the Constitution, where they wanted to count every black body.

- OK. - And now after the Civil War, they want to suppress the black vote.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So black voting is always viewed in the lens of who does it benefit and who does it hurt?

- Sure.

Sure.

- And so if it helps them, if it will increase their political power, then they want to count black votes.

- Yeah, yeah.

- If black people are free to exercise their own choices and decisions - and after the Civil War, they're voting Republican... - Right.

Right.

- ..in a Democratic south, then they view black people voting as being against their political interests and so they want to suppress it.

- Sure.

- So it always depends on how do you think black people voting will affect the country and affect your political interests?

And so right after the Civil War, the Republican Party at that time was committed to both freeing and then enfranchising... - Sure.

Sure.

- ..African-Americans, and understanding that the opposition would be immediate and fierce.

- To the point of killing the president, right?

And kind of supplanting someone who was more favorable to the south and their agenda.

- Yeah.

So Lincoln had already emancipated the slaves in 1863, but when he got reelected in '65, he said, "In my second term...

I'm not finished yet."

- That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

- "I have other things that I want to do."

And what was being debated at that time was the 14th Amendment and then the 15th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment would say that black people are citizens of the United States... - And we benefit from citizenship.

- ..something the Supreme Court had said in the Dred Scott decision, 1857, that black people have no rights.

- No rights.

- I'm quoting Chief Justice Marshall here, er, Roger B Taney, who said that black people have no rights, that white people need respect.

- Yeah.

- And so, therefore, the 14th Amendment needed to make explicit that black people are, in fact, citizens of the United States and entitled to equal protection under the law.

That's what the amendment says.

So that should have been sufficient.

- Right.

- But radical Republicans knew that Southern states would try to deny them the rights of other citizens.

So that's why the 15th Amendment says that states cannot deny a person the right to vote because of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

- Which was essentially slavery.

- And that didn't, you know, protect black women.

- Right.

- Because it didn't say you can't deny them the right to vote because of their gender.

And by leaving that out... And, you know, feminists like Sojourner Truth were aware of that, and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and they wanted him to include that you can't deny a person the right to vote because of their race, their previous condition of servitude as having once been a slave, or because of their gender.

And they would not include that.

- Well, if I may, you know, after the 15th Amendment, right, a few years in, there is this rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

Right?

And other white supremacist organizations who didn't spare any efforts to suppress and terrorize the black community.

So, you know, we talk about some of the massacres that took place.

And this is, I think, where the education fails us, because they'll talk a little bit about reconstruction in the history books and they'll talk...

But they will not discuss the vitriol, the attacks on African-American communities to suppress the vote.

One massacre that I read about was the Opelousas massacre of 1868, St Bernard's Parish of 1868.

The Danville of 1882... - Colfax.

- Colfax massacre of 1873.

So there were all of these massacres.

Can you talk, either of you, talk a little bit about them?

Let me go to you, Doctor.

Can you talk a little bit about those massacres and what the agenda was behind those massacres to suppress the black vote?

- Sure.

The agenda was simple.

It was to intimidate.

It was to control.

It was to disempower.

But not only were there these individual massacres, which, of course, we can look at now collectively and see their power.

but you mentioned the KKK, which was instrumental in terrorizing black people, not just in these particular specific incidents, but more widely.

And we now think of the KKK as this sort of marginal group, but it was really widespread.

The membership rates were high.

They were found all throughout the former Confederate states.

And there we...

I think we underestimate the power that they had, the control that they had over not just black people, but also their white supporters.

In terms of the violence, in terms of the intimidation.

They even managed to intimidate members, law enforcement that were there to protect black people, that they didn't manage to do.

And so that was...

These combined were different ways in which black voter participation was denied during that period.

- And you would assume that many of them were police officers, judges, sheriffs themselves.

The Klan was not, you know, focused in just one area of farmers.

These are people who have integrated at every level of government and probably right up unto, you know, our Congress and our Senate.

So when you think about the collusion of the three-fifths compromise, right, that's institutional governmental racism that affects the whole United States, where it reduces people to three-fifths of a human being.

And that's at the Capitol, right, the highest level of our government.

You mentioned Colfax, right, and what happened there.

Can you talk a little bit about that and what the impact of that was?

- Right.

Well, these are race riots where entire black communities are being attacked.

And the reason the reactions are so violent, I mean, President Grant has to declare martial law in several Southern states to protect black voters.

And the reason the reaction is so harsh is because black people are voting, and they're voting at every level.

They are attending their state constitutions to write new constitutions for their states.

They are electing local officials, sheriffs, judges, coroners.

- Yes.

- They elected black members to the Congress and the Senate for the first time.

You have Hiram Revels as a black senator from Mississippi.

- Mississippi, of all places!

- Right.

Replacing Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, right?

So you think how dramatic that shift is.

- That's a shift.

- Right?

So that, you know, now a black man is in the Senate holding the seat of the former president of the Confederacy.

So this is why their reaction is so violent and so immediate.

- Yeah.

- And then when you contrast this to, you know, someone like, you know, Fannie Lou Hamer from Mississippi in the 1960s where black people cannot vote.

- Right.

- Right?

So although they're given the right to vote with the 15th Amendment, once reconstruction comes to an end, the abandonment of black voters by the Republican Party, by the same Republican Party that helped them get the right to vote.

In the Tilden-Hayes election of 1867, Rutherford B. Hayes makes a deal with the Democrats that if you let me... - I'll pull the troops out.

- ..become president, I will remove the remaining troops who are protecting black voters from the South.

And then you could do whatever you want.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Take back the 40 acres and a mule that you've given to... You know, I'm still waiting on my 40 acres and mule.

Right?

And so there is this, again, collusion at the highest level.

If I can shift a little bit, you know, I did some research about St Bernard's Parish, right, in Louisiana, and Colfax.

You know, what happened down in Alabama.

You're talking about hundreds of people killed, you know, farms burned, houses burned, families terrorized.

Trauma that happens in the community, right?

And so this is all an attempt to hold on to power by a white supremacist who made all kinds of statements about not being led by African-American, the African-American community.

Bring that into the current laws that are happening right now in Pennsylvania, trying to put trying to put in place in Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona.

Can you talk a little bit about that, Doc, and then to you, Professor, about what's happening now and what we see?

- Georgia.

- Yeah.

They're having elections today, mayoral elections.

We've seen a different type, a different approach, which we... You know, I want to say that we're not seeing the massacres, but we did have January 6th.

- That's true.

That's true.

Sure, and they're trying to say that was a tourist visit to Washington, D.C. Certain people are, right?

- Right.

But the tactics are different.

There are basic... We can start with the basics.

Making it illegal to bring food or water to people who are waiting in line.

And, of course, we can talk about the reasons why they're waiting in line - the reduction in the number of polling sites, particularly in black communities.

The list goes on.

We can talk about the ways in which voting rolls are purged, you know, just indiscriminately just going through and removing people from voters lists.

We can talk about the denial of voting rights to felons or former felons, which is which is also problematic.

Changes in the timeline under which people are able to register to vote.

Reducing those timelines.

All of these tactics that are making it more and more difficult.

Now, why would they want to make it more difficult for people to vote in a democracy, right, in the exceptional United States that goes around the world telling people how to be a democracy?

Why would states want to make it more difficult for people to vote?

And the tactics may seem subtle, but they're not that far off from what they were previously.

Requiring government issued photo ID when millions, tens of millions of people don't have these types of IDs.

That disenfranchises them.

- To your point.

so I have some friends who are not from the minority community.

And they'll say to me, well, what does it matter if you require ID for people?

And I think that what our white brothers and sisters forget is the experience of voter suppression over the last 100 plus years, 200 plus years, however long, and the trauma that is attached to that, so we see a simple thing like, you know, voter ID.

as a throwback to, you know, a 120, 130 years ago when they were doing literacy tests and poll taxes and all that other kind of stuff, and the trauma that was connected to our communities being ravaged.

I know, you know, we skipped over it, but, you know, people were burned, people were killed, people were hanged.

You know, communities were decimated, you know, through the Jim Crow, through reconstruction.

And it wasn't just in the South.

People were hanged publicly.

And so, you know, to the point of, to our viewers, listen, you need to understand that connected to these new voter restrictions is trauma, epigenetic generational trauma that is passed down that has a impact down to our soul because we're connected to the pain of our forefathers.

So when we see these movements, we're thinking, oh, here we go again.

You know, here we are in 2021 and it's the same issue.

Can you talk a little bit about some of the things that you see happening and what it can evoke in us?

- Oh, yes.

Yes.

And I think the examples that we're giving are showing how people are very clever at reaching their goal.

- Sure.

- So, you know, when the Constitution says you cannot deny a person the right to vote because of their race, they figure out other ways to achieve the same goal.

So you have an objective - if you want to stop people, black people from voting, you cannot specifically say black people cannot vote.

- Right.

- So you have to have other ways.

So if you require, say, voter ID, people might say, well, why is that racist?

Why don't people have identification?

Well, it relates to class and race.

So the primary reason to have a driver's license is to drive a car.

- Right.

- Not to vote.

Poor people who don't have cars don't have a necessity to have this.

- There's public transportation.

- If you live in an urban area where you have access to buses, subways, then perhaps you don't need to have a car.

And so therefore, it's going to affect, you know, those communities.

People who are transient and move often for economic reasons, particularly in Covid, people losing their apartments, losing their homes, their addresses may change.

And so this makes it more difficult to find a polling place.

Changing the places where people have to vote between elections.

How long you keep the polls open, how many machines are open, creating longer lines for people who find it more difficult to get off work.

- Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

- And so that is all to discourage you.

If you go up to vote and there's a two-hour line then maybe... - Or three hours, or four hours, right?

- ..maybe you'll go home.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Please.

- And if I may, we also have to question why at the height of a pandemic, it would be controversial for people to want to vote early, vote by mail rather than to be in crowded spaces.

You really have to question the motives behind these controversies.

I guess the question is, do we really have to question it or do we understand, right, that this again, I mean, they're saying that, you know, our own government found that this last election in 2020 was the most secure election in American history.

But yet there is this whole idea that, you know, the election was stolen, you know, from the former president.

And it just seems that there is no limit that they won't go to.

So January 6th, they want to have a panel to review it, it's actually ongoing.

But there are still Republicans who are saying that this wasn't a problem.

You know, you know, they were just visiting.

Right?

And so there was not collusion.

And when you, I'm sure that as they dig, there were people within the government who worked with other people to give them access to the government.

You know, we're coming to a close.

I mean, I'll begin with you, Dr Terry.

What would you like our viewers to be able to take away from our conversation today as it relates to voting and the long history of voting, voter suppression in America?

- Two things.

One is that we can't look at what's happening today in a vacuum.

It's part of a long history in the United States, a long history of voter suppression, a long history of trying to deny African-Americans in particular the right to political participation.

The other is that if we want to be this exceptional nation, if we want to go around the world exemplifying democracy, then we really need to do better.

I really...

I think that there are those who are simply in denial, but I think that there are also those who are genuinely ignorant of the history of this country, unaware of the fact that this is not new, and this is something that needs to change in order to make this country as great as they assume that it is.

- That's good.

Thank you.

One minute left.

What would you like to share?

- I always like to end on an optimistic note.

That when you look at the long chain of history, there have been challenges, but we are moving to a more perfect union.

Not perfect yet, but expanding it.

And the more we expand our democracy, the more inclusive it becomes, the more hope we have for our society.

If people lose faith in democracy and lose faith in voting as a nonviolent way of bringing about change, then we lose the possibility of changing the society in a positive way.

I'm also optimistic because of my students.

Working with young people.

These divisions we see in society, they are much more comfortable with diversity of all kinds.

And I'm hopeful that if we can preserve democracy and allow people to believe in it, that we can have a brighter future.

- That's amazing.

You know, I wish we had more time to discuss.

You know, we take the mind-set of empowering, educating and bringing conversations to people that will help expand their view and understanding.

And the two of you have done that today.

Professor Sholomo Levy, Dr Terry Ann Jones, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you to our viewing audience On behalf of everyone here at PBS39.

I'm Pastor Phillip Davis.

Listen, God bless you.

Keep being courageous, and we'll see you next time.