Has the South outgrown its tendency to suppress black voting? Read this article in front page of NY TIMES!
EVERGREEN,
Ala. — Jerome Gray, a 74-year-old black man, has voted in every
election since 1974 in this verdant little outpost of some 4,000 people
halfway between Mobile and Montgomery. Casting a ballot, he said, is a
way to honor the legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a civil rights landmark born from a bloody confrontation 70 miles north of here, in Selma.
....based on utility records. A
three-judge federal court in Mobile barred the city from using the new
voting list, invoking Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act...
Critics
of the Section 5 preclearance requirement call it an unwarranted and
discriminatory federal intrusion on state sovereignty and a badge of
shame for the affected jurisdictions that is no longer justified....
The
law applies to nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — and to
scores of counties and municipalities in other states.
.....They had removed almost 800 people from the voting rolls, including Jerome Gray.”
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