What would Dr. Martin Luther King have said about Trump's attack on voting rights?
Get the Point!
Yesterday, President Donald Trump signed what I firmly believe to be yet another patently illegal executive order, this time aiming to compel voters to produce passports or another form of federal identification in order to register and vote in federal elections.
For the sake of hypothetical analysis, such an order—if legal—would impact millions of citizens, particularly the poor, who do not hold passports or similar forms of federal picture identification. Nevermind that this order would clearly impact poor voters in his own party, Trump, like many on the right, is so obsessed with the "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was "stolen" by Joe Biden that he, and they, are setting the stage for future voting box shenanigans by electronic hackers.
The problem, however, is that power to proscribe voting is NOT vested in the president or Executive Branch officials by the Constitution; the Framers gave Congress and the individual states power to regulate the "times, places and manner of holding elections." As such, Trump’s latest nonsensical order will be litigated swiftly and very likely will find Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with the three liberal justices to overturn his latest authoritarian act.
Stay tuned...
As many of you know, this month marks the 60th anniversary of Bloody Selma, and the horrific beatings that civil rights protesters took while seeking to secure Black voting rights during a time when the 15th Amendment, the one that guaranteed Black voting rights on paper, was totally ignored across the Jim Crow South.
That same month, Dr. Martin Luther King, the then recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, led a successful second march to the state capitol steps in Montgomery, Alabama (above) and during his fiery speech, reminded all assembled (and watching on television) about the racist roots of conservative attacks on voting rights:
"Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. (Listen to him) That is what was known as the Populist Movement. (Speak, sir) The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses (Yes, sir) and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses (Yeah) into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.
To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. (Right) I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, (Yes) thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. (Yes, sir) And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.
If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)
Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike (Uh huh) resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; (Yes, sir) they segregated southern churches from Christianity (Yes, sir); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; (Yes, sir) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (Yes, sir) That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality…"
Dr. King's words echo through history and sadly, are just as relevant in this present age as they were 60 years ago, what with poor white MAGA and their blind Black right-wing kinsmen cheering for the removal of Black civil rights, women's rights, and deportations of immigrants of color—all the while believing the pipe dream that as the billionaire class grows richer, that they will “trickle down” their excess wealth to the poorer masses who elected them to put Blacks, browns, women, and immigrants in their places.
Lest we forget...