Georgia On Our Minds
Georgia On Our Minds
Power in the U. S. Senate will be decided in a special runoff election in Georgia on January 5. Will there be a continuation of a Republican majority under the obstruction-minded Mitch McConnell? Will a new Senate with Democratic leadership be put in place to support Biden initiatives? The stakes are truly enormous. And this will be decided in Georgia!
It should be remembered that a major change came to the political landscape of the South in 1964. Republicans took power in reaction to Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights laws and, in 1965, to the Voting Rights Act. In response, the Solid South, Democratic since the end of Reconstruction, turned solidly Republican.
As Nixon strategist Kevin Phillps put it, “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.” Segregation in new forms limped on. Black voters remained disenfranchised. It was a case of Change the Name But Keep the Game.
History’s ugliness is often pushed out of books and minds. But it turns out some Americans have long memories and they vote. Here’s a taste of what Black voters are remembering.
In 1947, Charles Wallace Collins, a respected Alabama lawyer and arch-segregationist who once held the position of librarian of the Supreme Court, wrote approvingly, “the doctrine of white supremacy is akin to a religious belief. . . . It is rooted in the very fiber of the southern soul.”
He espoused the unwavering existence of three bars blocking the path of Black aspirations to “enter into every phase of American society”– the bar of blood, the bar of suffrage, and the bar of segregation. Unmentioned by Collins was the bar of violence. There were 531 lynchings in Georgia between 1882 and 1968. Missing as well were the church burnings and countless threats of economic and physical intimidation targeting Black communities and individuals.
African Americans now constitute one-third of the Peach state’s population. Few know that the Black population in the state of Georgia fell from 47% in 1900 to just 26% in 1970. Most who left Georgia moved Up North. Down South had discriminated, abused, murdered and just plain worn them out. The Collins’ “bars” of racism were too painful to endure.
Those who chose to remain were essentially disenfranchised. Only 20,000 Black Americans managed to vote in 1900 Georgia. Across the entire South devices and practices were firmly in place to disenfranchise Black voters. These included all white primaries, Grandfather clauses, poll taxes, property tests, literacy tests, understanding clause tests. Between 1920 and 1930 an estimated total of 10,000 African Americans voted in Georgia. The potential Black electorate during those years was 369,511.
While many Black Georgians chose to leave the state, they often left with regret, looking over their shoulder, returning for reunions and on holidays. But the migrants, the refugees escaping oppression, remained Georgians. They were from families which had been born, lived, and worked in the Peach State for generations. And their children and grandchildren grew up with the stories of “home,” stories of joy earned but streaked with undeniable pain. These memory ties to the state are deep. As “Georgia On My Mind,” the official state song goes: “Still in peaceful dreams I see/The road leads back to you, yeah/Georgia, yeah, Georgia.”
Between 1990 and 2019, Georgia’s Black population grew from 1.8 million to 3.5 million. Given the importance of the coming election, on January 5, 2021, Black voters, across generations, class lines, and geography – young and old, from the red dirt poor in rural areas to the style-setting professionals of Atlanta, will be casting votes in overwhelming numbers.
Trump and the Republican Party will again call (without evidence) these Black votes illegal, part of a “rigged” election. In truth, these votes will come from the hearts of Georgia homes, Georgia memories, Georgians claiming full citizenship rights.
African Americans in Georgia have sung and heard the lines “No peace, no peace I find/Just an old, sweet song/Keeps Georgia on my mind” countless times. For many, this song, those words, mean something more, something even deeper than control of the United States Senate.
It’s reasonable to believe that Black citizens standing in those long voting lines will carry with them family stories of hard days past in Georgia. Win or lose, in ways no pollster or pundit can fathom, they will be voting memories along with their social-economic interests.
Political and poetic justice may be at hand.
___________
Letter to the Editor, Terre Haute Tribune Star, published Jan. 2, 2021
TH Trib Star
posted by gary daily | 7:26 PM
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