On Aug. 6, 2015, all across the nation, Americans were commemorating the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Act is deeply rooted in many of the defining principles of our nation, such as consent of the governed, equality of rights, and one man one vote, for these beliefs would serve as some of the primary reasons our Founding Fathers formed the Stamp Act Congress, Continental Congress, and met in Philadelphia as part of the Constitutional Convention. It was there at Philadelphia that the Founders devised the grandest and most deeply affixed document associated with our land, the Constitution of the United States of America, and for over 220 years that document has performed magnificently indeed. Congress, in accordance with the will of the people and the States, on six occasions have amended the Constitution to ensure voting fairness. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) sought to grant suffrage to former slaves and freedmen. The Seventeenth Amendment (1913) brought about the direct election of U.S. Senators, which had previously been a role delegated to the State Legislatures. The Nineteenth Amendment (1920) saw suffrage finally bestowed upon America's women, interestingly enough, it should serve as a source of pride for all Tennesseans that in 1919, when the vote for women's suffrage came down to one lone vote from one lone State, the letter from his mother urged Rep. Harry T. Burn to vote the right way.
The Twenty-Third Amendment (1961) sought to extend voting rights and privileges in Presidential elections to the citizens of Washington D. C., while the chief basis for the TwentyFourth Amendment (1964) was to ban the poll tax while dually ensuring the unequivocal rights of citizens to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President. The sixth and final voting rights amendment was a direct advent of the civil strife, unrest and turbulence that had been endured by the country in the late sixties, and the galvanization and rallying of the nation's young people at this time resulted in passage and ratification of the Twenty- Sixth Amendment (1971), which allowed 18-year-olds to participate in the electoral process for the first time. Together, these are the six amendments that Congress, the States and the People have similarly felt needed to be passed and ratified in order to safeguard universal fairness and equality in all of our local,state and national electoral processes.
On this day we also must pay homage to those who marched in Selma in March 2015. We remember how they were beaten, trampled and thrust from atop the Edmund Petitus Bridge on that Bloody Sunday day of March 7, 1965, only to show tremendous resolve by returning to cross the bridge several days later in order to reaffirm the notion that universal fairness and
equality in Voting Rights should be the law of the land, and in order to make that promise real,
poll taxes, literacy test, grandfather clauses and racial polarization, along with institutionalized
and systemic biases had to be permanently eradicated from the soul of the nation Representative John Lewis, who would be one of those who would be brutally beaten atop the bridge, would provide testimony on the series of events that happened there and to this date has continued to speak and teach on the 1965 Selma series of marchers. President Lyndon Baines Johnson would note this before a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, as he said if we eliminate these social vices by treating all citizens with dignity and respect, and granted equal access in all the forms granted by the Constitution, “We shall overcome.” President Johnson also urged us to remember other minority groups as well as the plights faced by the poor.
There are several events that have occurred in the city of Chattanooga's long history of race relations that can serve as a sterling example of how the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has impacted American communities on a national, state and local basis, and in 2013, upon the retirement of Judge R. Allan Edgar from the federal bench, T. Maxfield Bahner and Russell W. Gray would highlight one of these instances in an article written for the U.S. Court Historical Society which was entitled, The Other Brown Case: The Promise of the U.S. Constitution at Work in Chattanooga. This article traced the sad and sordid history of how Chattanooga, like most American communities in the aftermath of Reconstruction in the 1870's, would purposely and systematically weaken and disenfranchise the voting rights of African-American communities. On no less than three occasions between 1880-1911, the city's charter was amended to change voting procedures, implement voting deterrents like poll taxes, and reduce the number of African-Americans who served in political offices. When the city's charter was amended for a third time in thirty years in 1911 in favor of an at-large voting system, it would not be until 1971 that a single African-American served on the City Commission. His name was John Franklin Sr. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many stalwarts of Chattanooga's African-American community saw that the conditions were ripe for a change, and a dramatic shift in the fortunes of the African-American and minority electorate would occur due to their persistent calls for justice. The names of these freedom fighters were: Dr. Tommie Brown, Leamon Pierce, Rev. Herbert H. Wright, J.K. Brown, Johnny W. Holloway, George A. Key, Norma Crowder, and Buford McElrath, Lorenzo Ervin, Bobby Ward, Annie Thomas and Maxine Cousin. Laughlin McDonald of ACLU, local Chattanooga Attorney Myron Bernard McClary, the Hon. R.H. Dinkins, and several attorneys who were associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights would try the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. These courageous citizens and attorneys would file a lawsuit which would eventually be referred to as Brown v. Board of Commissioners of the city of Chattanooga, 722 F. Supp. 380 (1989), and eventually reach the bench of Judge R. Allan Edgar.
Judge Edgar would rule on the case on Aug. 8, 1989, and the opinion would be as remarkable as it would be sweeping. The Court was able to detail several instances of voter disenfranchisement and suppression, trace an egregious pattern of persistent and consistent minority vote dilution, and outline clear violations of the Voting Rights Act and the subsequent constitutional amendments that protected the voting and equal rights of all citizens. The rationale and logic that Judge Edgar would apply in issuing his opinion would be multifaceted, which included: historical and spatial analysis; applying the three-pronged Gingles Test which seeks to measure whether a minority group is “sufficiently large and geographically compact enough to constitute a majority in a single member district”; a review of the political cohesiveness of the said group in order to determine the presence of racially polarized voting, which would eventually be conveyed in Judge Edgar's opinion to be clearly present because after employing the Majority/Majority Test amongst other statistical elements, one could reasonably conclude that the voting patterns of the racial groups at that time had a high degree of variance. In fact, in many instances, a preference for political candidates by the said group had been established. Lastly, the court looked at whether, in the absence of special or extenuating circumstances, did a group of “bloc” voters develop to defeat minority candidates, which in the court's opinion it did. Further, the Court would utilize the Rational Basis Test in order to evaluate the extent that property owners, who often lived outside the City, impacted local elections, and determined that the major flaws with the Chattanooga Charter at that time was that it didn't limit the number of people whose vote could be attached to a single property. Likewise, there was no limitation established in terms of minimum property value. The judge would illustrate the court's opinion by saying that a one-fifteenth ”undivided interest in a lot assessed at $100”, did not establish enough a substantial interest to vote in a city election. In sum, Section (5.1) of the city charter was ruled to be in violation of the Establishment Clause of the 14th amendment. The Court's other major ruling would be that because of Section 2 violations under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the court was pressed to “fashion equitable relief.” Amongst other things, the ruling brought about the creation of districts which would be composed of the people who truly encompassed the area, who would gain more of a substantial interest in determining the
candidates of their own selection when there is no special, competing or extenuating
circumstance that is present.
In addition to the Brown decision, the lasting vestiges of Voting Rights Act of 1965 has had a direct impact on the Chattanooga community in more recent times. In October of 2011, the entire nation became outraged when 96 year old Ms. Dorothy Cooper was denied the right to vote despite producing four pieces of identification, including her birth certificate. The issue was because of the discrepancies between her married and maiden names and clerical errors that occurred through no fault of her own. From CNN to the New York Times, Ms. Cooper was one of the individuals critics of controversial Voter ID laws would cite when describing many of the flaws, discrepacnices and inaccuracies often associated with these laws, and like Ms. Cooper, many of the nation's more senior citizens found themselves in limbo as they had been essential disenfranchised overnight. Yet, another fascinating event pertaining to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 occurred on June 28, 2013, when the aging patriarch of the Chattanooga Hamilton County NAACP, James R. Mapp, would give one of his last public speeches on the steps of City Hall on one bright Sunny Friday afternoon. As the words rolled like thunder off his tongue, Mapp would urge the Chattanooga Congressional delegation in Washington D.C., as well as state and local leaders, to restore the key provisions which had recently been struck out of the Voting Rights Act because of the Supreme Court's Shelby v. Holder (2013) decision.
Let it then be for us to exclaim, on this the Fiftieth Anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that the precious right to vote shall not be denied, nor abridged, under the conditions and pretenses of race, sex, creed, class or congenital impairments and disabilities. We all should be afforded the opportunity to partake in the most critical and essential aspect of citizenship and democracy, striking the ballot and casting the vote. Let us guard against destructive devices that are albeit illuminating and may prove ruinous to our freedoms, principles and liberties, and strive to uphold universal fairness. As part of that fairness, and indeed the most rudimentary and basic of the rights guaranteed to all American citizens, is the essential right to vote. We as a nation have not always been an honest arbiter of that practice. Elections have not always been smooth propositions that served the overwhelming interest of the people most in need. Issues, are at times polarizing and effects us all on a moral, social, spiritual, and political basis. Nevertheless, as the wisdom of our Founding Fathers has afforded us the opportunity, we can make a straight path out of a crooked road, and lemonade from the bitter taste of the lemon. Reviewing the history of the Voting Rights Act, we should be thankful that a brave few were willing to cast “Yes Votes.” The Founders cast a yes vote for liberty and the forming of a more perfect union. African-Americans and minority groups have cast a yes vote for freedom, justice, and human dignity. Women have cast a yes vote for gender equality. We thank the Brown plaintiffs, Dorothy Cooper, James R. Mapp, and all of the Chattanooga stalwarts who cast a yes vote to see that our system is changed for the betterment of future generations. How wonderful would it be if many of our elected officials would cast yes votes as they guard against voter suppression techniques like gerrymandering, unfair redistricting, and fix the fallacies in voter id laws such as allowing college students with State issued IDs the opportunity to use those ID's in elections. And as we pay tribute to those who have borne the battle and participated in the struggle, gladly do we hope, continuously do we pray, and take this time to thank them for their courage, dedication, and willingness to make the essential right to vote available to us all. When we stand for truth and justice, and for one another, we cast the biggest yes vote of all, as President Johnson so eloquently said to the nation, we cast a yes vote because we can overcome.
Eric A. Atkins, M.Ed.