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Republicans in Alabama and Florida Are Attacking Civil Rights Gains
The struggles of a century can be wiped out with the stroke of a pen, whether it is erasing Black history from state curricula, or gerrymandering state maps, or purging voter rolls.
Sep 10, 2023
In May, 1901, 150 white men gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, to rewrite their state’s constitution. They elected John Knox, a prominent lawyer, to chair the convention. Knox said in his opening speech: “[W]hat is it that we want to do? Why, it is to establish white supremacy in this state… we must establish it by law—not by force or fraud.” He added, “There is no higher duty resting upon us [but] to protect the sanctity of the ballot in every portion of the State.” The new constitution formalized the racism inflicted on Black Alabamians, stripping them of the right to vote and further entrenching Jim Crow segregation.
Many of the remarkable achievements of the civil rights movement were forged in Alabama. The 1965 Voting Rights Act followed the Selma-to-Montgomery March earlier that year. The population of Lowndes County, Alabama, was 80% Black, yet not one of those Black residents was registered to vote. Last November, over 120 years after the ratification in 1901 of Alabama’s racist constitution, voters finally replaced it.
Yet today, the white supermajorities that control both houses of Alabama’s legislature, along with Alabama’s white Republican governor, Kay Ivey, continue to disenfranchise Black voters.
This second gerrymandered map was again rejected, this time by a panel of three federal judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump.
Racist redistricting of Alabama’s congressional districts is one ploy. In 2021, Alabama lawmakers gerrymandered the state’s congressional map, reducing what should have been two majority Black districts to one. Civil rights and voting rights groups sued, and a federal judge rejected the map, declaring it in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the judge, ordering the map to be redrawn. The legislature drew a new map, but defied the Supreme Court, keeping only one majority Black congressional district.
This second gerrymandered map was again rejected, this time by a panel of three federal judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump. Stating in their order that they were “deeply troubled” by the state ignoring the court’s authority, they appointed a special master and a cartographer to draw a map that Alabama will be required to use for the upcoming 2024 election.
Similar court battles to preserve the voting rights of Black citizens are being waged across the South, with lawsuits in Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Florida. In Florida, Republican Governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis vetoed the most recent map drafted by the legislature, forcing the adoption of his own. DeSantis’ map was tossed out by a judge for being racially gerrymandered.
“DeSantis and those with him, they don’t want to talk about the real record. That’s why they redistrict illegally,” Bishop William Barber, founding director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Racist voter suppression creates death, because when you suppress the right to vote and you stack and pack and bleach Black voters, you allow extremists to get elected, who then, once they get elected, they block healthcare, they block living wages, they block addressing poverty. And when you do those things, people die. Bad public policy creates death. Racist rhetoric and division can create a context of death, give people the license to kill. All of it is deadly.”
Bishop Barber was responding to yet another deadly mass shooting, this one in Jacksonville, Florida. On Saturday, August 26, a white supremacist shot and killed three Black people at a Dollar General store, then killed himself. The shooter’s semi-automatic rifle had swastikas drawn on it. Law enforcement has stated decisively that the massacre was motivated by the shooter’s racism. News coverage of the mass shooting was overwhelmed when Hurricane Idalia struck Florida, but was not forgotten in Jacksonville’s Black community.
“This hurricane of racism that we’ve been dealing with in the Jacksonville community is not new,” Rodney Hurst, civil rights leader, historian, and author from Jacksonville, said on Democracy Now! As a teenager, he led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Jacksonville. On August 27, 1960, in what became known as “Ax Handle Saturday,” the young, nonviolent protesters were attacked by a mob of 200 whites armed with ax handles and baseball bats. The Dollar General shooting took place as Hurst and others were planning to mark the 63rd anniversary of that attack. In Washington, D.C., thousands were commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
The struggles of a century can be wiped out with the stroke of a pen, whether it is erasing Black history from state curricula, or gerrymandering state maps, or purging voter rolls and other methods of disenfranchising voters of color. All this is happening now in state legislatures across the country. It will take a force more powerful, the power of the people, to turn back this tide
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Watchdog Argues Obama Admin's Cave on White Supremacy Helped Pave Way for Jacksonville Shooting
"We must not be fooled into treating each massacre as its own tragedy," said one civil rights advocate. "The tragedy first lies in the unchecked proliferation of the violent racist ideology coupled with the unchecked access to weapons of war."
Aug 30, 2023
As the community of Jacksonville, Florida reeled from the killing of three Black Americans by a white supremacist at a Dollar General store last Saturday, a government watchdog said that the "lion's share" of blame for the proliferation of racist, white nationalist violence in the U.S. can be placed on Republican politicians including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump—but noted that the Obama administration helped allow white supremacy to fester by caving to the GOP at a crucial moment more than a decade ago.
Chris Lewis, a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, pointed to the Democratic administration's response when Republican lawmakers complained about a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report in 2009 that warned of the growth of right-wing extremism, including the white supremacist movement, and the danger it posed to communities across the United States.
The report prompted calls for then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's resignation from Republicans including then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who said the report could be about "two-thirds of Americans, who, you know, who might go to church, who may have served in the military, who may be involved in community activities"—suggesting this was evidence that the threat should not be addressed rather than a dangerous sign of the influence of white supremacy across American life.
Instead of defending the report, Napolitano told journalists that the document "was not well-written" and "should not have gone out in the form it did," adding that she had formally apologized to veterans who were offended by the document's warnings about white nationalism in the military.
But as Napolitano withdrew the report and, according toThe New York Times, "essentially disbanded" DHS programs aimed at fighting white supremacist domestic terrorism, the problem was in fact intensifying within the military and other institutions. One 2020 Military Times poll found that "more than half of minority service members say they have personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideologically-driven racism within the ranks in recent months."
"In the 14 years since the report was released and then quashed, right-wing groups have increased the size of their ranks and unleashed violence against marginalized individuals with growing frequency," wrote Lewis. "In addition, they have increased their presence in the nation's military and policing institutions. Far-right extremists' infiltration of the armed forces and law enforcement now poses an internal threat to the state's security apparatus."
After withdrawing the report, Lewis noted, DHS reduced the number of staffers analyzing all domestic terrorism that was unrelated to Islam, canceled state and local law enforcement briefings about the threat of white nationalism, and declined to publicize more than a dozen reports on the matter.
"There was some talk in the administration about the potential harm it would do to turn a blind eye to those groups," he wrote. "And yet, that's precisely what the White House did, deferring to Republicans and ultimately contributing to this dangerous moment in history."
The shooter in Jacksonville last week perpetrated just one of at least 267 right-wing domestic terrorist plots that have been planned or carried out since 2015. More than 90 people have been killed in those attacks, with the majority murdered by white supremacists who targeted Jewish people, Black people, immigrants, or people in the LGBTQIA+ community.
The Biden administration now has "an opportunity to rectify this problem," said Lewis, by declaring white supremacist violence a national emergency and allocating federal resources to fighting the threat.
Following the attack, Sherrilyn Ifill, a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, called for "a federal investigation into white supremacist violence, using the power and investigatory tools available to every federal agency."
"We cannot be expected to live like this," said Ifill. "It is not 1877. We must not be fooled into treating each massacre as its own tragedy. The tragedy first lies in the unchecked proliferation of the violent racist ideology coupled with the unchecked access to weapons of war."
The Obama administration, wrote Lewis, silenced a report that "could have saved lives."
"Instead of ignoring House Republicans crying wolf over the Department of Homeland Security daring to scrutinize right-wing extremists, and brushing off the falsehoods of conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh who claimed that 'there is not one instance they can cite as evidence where any of these right-wing groups have done anything,' the Obama administration bowed its head to the mob and neutered its own ability to combat domestic terrorism," he added in a statement. "Now, a decade later, here we are. The Biden administration should not repeat this mistake and should allocate resources to this."
Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law,
noted that the "broader context" for the Jacksonville shooting includes "elected officials like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other state legislators are intent on implementing racist policies and passing anti-Black legislation designed to stoke racial animus, which inevitably leads to violence."
"Congress must allocate more funding and resources to investigate and prosecute hate crimes on a national scale," Hewitt added, "and to provide more training for state and local law enforcement to effectively police hate crimes—which must include stronger regulations on the ability to obtain firearms."
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Racist White Man Fatally Shoots Three Black People at Florida Store
'He hated Black people,' the sheriff said
Aug 27, 2023
A racist white man killed three black people in a racially motivated attack then killed himself in Jacksonville, Florida.
The man, identified by local media as 21-year-old Ryan Palmeter, entered a Dollar General store and opened fire with an AR-15 assault rifle.
Sheriff T K Waters said three blacks - two men and a woman - were killed by the gunman, who wore body armor and left manifestos of his “disgusting ideology of hate.” The gunman had swastikas drawn on his AR-15-style rifle
“This shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Sheriff Waters said.
"He targeted a certain group of people and that's Black people. That's what he said he wanted to kill. And that's very clear," Sheriff Waters said. The manifestos made it clear: “He wanted to kill n******,” the sheriff said.
The attack happened less than a mile from the historically black Edwards Waters University.
The shooter first went to the university campus, where he was asked to identify himself by a security officer, the university said in a statement. When he refused, he was asked to leave.
"The individual returned to their car and left campus without incident," the statement added.
Ryan Palmeter lived with his parents in nearby Oakleaf and was a registered Republican, according to Florida voting records.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in the U.S., with more than 469 so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
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