"Still Running for Freedom: Southern Black Votes and the Changing Face of American Politics"
My paper will reflect upon and assess the political significance of southern black enfranchisement. I will explore what the civil rights coalition expected from passage of the act and the extent to which those goals were met and unfulfilled. My primary assumption is that its supporters did not look at the right to vote narrowly, but considered the ballot as a leading took toward self-determination, full citizenship, and political and economic power. Given the heavy load the right to vote was expected to carry, I will attempt to weigh its successes and failures. In doing so, I will ask why access to the ballot did not realign the South along progressive lines, as many reformers and prognosticators as V.O. Key [Southern Politics in State and Nation, 1949] and Pat Watters and Reese Cleghorn [Climbing Jacob's Ladder, 1967] predicted. The paper will also address the criticism of scholars such as Lani Guinier [The Tyranny of the Majority, 1994]that Voting Rights Act enforcement has had the unintended effects of limiting African American communities in achieving their policy objectives and selecting authentic" black representation.Finally, this paper will ask whether black enfranchisement has brought political legitimacy and empowerment to African Americans. In so doing, I will look at Barack Obama's current campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in comparison with that of Jesse Jackson's in the 1980s. I will argue that extension of the right to vote for black southerners during the Second Reconstruction has helped transform the South and the United States, but has failed to remedy the racial inequalities, reinforced by economic class distinctions, ignored by the First Reconstruction. The tragic events of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 will underscore this discussion.
Steven F. Lawson, Rutgers University