The Democratic Party of the South was the political arm of this effort, while the Ku Klux Klan and other groups carried out paramilitary and terror functions (murder, rape, lynching, etc.). Those participating in the political arm were known as "The Redeemers," whites who sought “redemption” from the difficulty they experienced sharing power with black citizens.
A true moment of redemption for white supremacy came when the Supreme Court of the United States issued the Williams versus Mississippi decision. This decision allowed other states in the South and elsewhere to adopt the voter suppression provisions of the Mississippi Constitution which were specifically designed to restrict the voting rights of black citizen’s rights and minimize their participation in civic life.
Plaintiff Williams sought to have his murder conviction overturned because he'd not been tried by a jury of his peers. A black citizen, Williams pointed out that juries were chosen on the basis of voter rolls. When they registered to vote, blacks were routinely discriminated against through a variety of means, including the literacy test required to register. White registrars routinely failed blacks and passed whites regardless of the results. Williams argued that he had not received a trial by jury of his peers, since black Mississippians were systematically excluded from the jury.
The Court failed to take this obvious fact into account and decided:
[The Mississippi Constitution and laws] "… do not on their face discriminate between the races, and it has not been shown that their actual administration was evil; only that evil was possible under them." Williams v. Mississippi, Supreme Court of the U.S., Apr. 25, 1898
The justices either didn't know or didn't care that the Mississippi Constitution had been constructed by the Redeemers and others with the specific intent of keeping black voters from voting.
The affirmation of the Mississippi Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court in Williams was followed by the spread of that document's deliberately conceived methods of voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement to states throughout the South and the nation. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and felon disenfranchisement had their origins in this document, one the Court affirmed. While detached from their historical origins, provisions of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 are well placed in state constitutions across the country.
A Court and Government against the People
The Court must have known that the millions at risk of losing their voting rights are predominantly black, less educated, and young. Yet the Court made the most political decision since it held its own "election of nine" in 2000 to give Bush the presidency.
This Court also resurrected a doctrine that discriminates against minority citizens that mirrors the Williams versus Mississippi case of 1898. The Court's majority redeemed the once-vanquished doctrine of restricting and contracting the vote.
This is the Court that allows torture by federal authorities; sits idly by as habeas corpus is removed from our laws; allows our votes to be counted in private by partisan corporations; sanctions illegal wars declared only by the president; and rarely misses an opportunity to support the interests of large corporations over those of citizens. Now the Court is collaborating with those who would restrict the vote.
In order to remain connected to reality, it's time to admit and proclaim the obvious fact -- our country is approaching a lawless state. The highest court issued a blatantly political decision that denies the vote in a way that places one political party at a significant disadvantage as we approach a presidential election and, more importantly, threatens to disenfranchise millions.
As it did this, the Court denied the most fundamental tenet of our political history -- the right of all citizens to select their representatives. Today it's the poor and minorities. Which segment of the population will be losing its right to vote next?
How will the people ever fully restore the vanishing right of habeas corpus (see note) and other civil liberties? How will the movement for social justice ever be revitalized?
Election fraud has now been expanded in scope to include the nation's highest court, which has become the enemy of the people. Justice Stevens should read his own words from his dissent in Bush versus Gore:
"Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." Justice John Paul Stevens, Dissent, Bush v. Gore, Dec.12, 2000
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