|
The Miami Herald
End Juneteenth's legacy of
bias, in law and practice
By Joseph Hayden
June 19, 2003 Today,
many African Americans are celebrating Juneteenth, the bittersweet
anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the last remaining slaves were
freed. Some people assume that slavery in America died when
President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. But
Lincoln lacked the power to enforce his edict in the
Confederate-controlled South, and slave owners in remote states like
Texas continued to exploit their human chattel. For two and a half
years, no one told the slaves that they were no longer a white man's
property. Only when a regiment of Union soldiers arrived in Texas
with news of slavery's demise -- and the power to back it up -- did
Lincoln's promise to African Americans come true. While this
138-year-old tale might at first seem like ancient history, echoes
of the Juneteenth story resonate in the struggles people of color
face today. Getting rights on paper, Juneteenth reminds us, is a far
cry from getting them in practice. That's what makes Juneteenth such
a bittersweet holiday. It honors a great advance for African
Americans -- gaining the rights of citizenship, especially the right
to vote. Yet it also marks the beginning of an era in which whites
imposed countless discriminatory laws -- like poll taxes, literacy
tests and grandfather clauses -- meant to keep blacks
powerless. Many of these overtly discriminatory state laws have been
called out as racist and unconstitutional and have been wiped from
the books. However, there is at least one notable exception:
felony-disenfranchisement laws. Felony-disenfranchisement laws are
state rules that strip voting rights from citizens convicted of
certain crimes. If you commit a crime, these laws say, you lose the
vote. Without federal guidelines for them, their harshness varies by
state. The most extreme states -- such as Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Kentucky and Virginia -- bar ex-felons from voting for
life. Is it coincidence that the harshest disenfranchisement laws
are mostly in former slave states? Not in the slightest. Like poll
taxes and literacy tests, the ostensibly race-neutral
disenfranchisement laws were created to keep blacks from voting. In
1896, for example, Mississippi lawmakers set only a narrow range of
offenses -- bribery, burglary, theft, arson, perjury, forgery,
embezzlement, bigamy and ''obtaining money or goods under false
pretenses'' -- made you lose the vote. Why not murder or rape?
Because ex-slaves were far more likely to commit petty property
crimes than serious offenses. |
