“THE END OF NEO-SLAVERY”
This week marks the 60th anniversary of the end of neo-slavery in the United States. On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, which effectively ended neo-slavery in the USA. This law ratified the right to vote expressed in the 14th and 15th amendments, and it provided for federal oversight of all elections, and required federal preclearance for all changes in voting rights laws, especially in the South. The political gymnastics being performed currently in the Texas legislature gerrymandering would have been greatly slowed down by the original wording of the Voting Rights Act, but some of its provisions were struck down by the current SCOTUS in 2012 and 2021 (more on that next week).
And, yes, the most litigated amendment to the Constitution is the 14th Amendment, which basically does four things: guarantees citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the US (Trump is litigating that now); forbids states from interfering with the citizenship rights guaranteed by the Constitution; provides for due process under the law; and provides for equal protection of all citizens under the law. With all of this work accomplished in the 14th Amendment, it is easy to see why it is the most litigated amendment of all in the Constitution. In one of those July blessings that I mentioned last week, it was ratified on July 9, 1868.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 grew out of the 14th Amendment, and it sought to protect the voting rights of all citizens. In that sense, it ended neo-slavery in the USA, especially in the South. I say “neo-slavery” because that it is a much more accurate description of life in the South from 1875-1965 than “Jim Crow.” The term “Jim Crow” mitigates the horror that Black people experienced growing up in the white-dominated South, and “neo-slavery” should replace it in the history books as a description of race history in that period. To use the term “Jim Crow” as a description of this period is to diminish the reality of the horrible repression and oppression of those years.
I learned this term from Doug Blackmon’s fine book “Slavery by Another Name,” (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009), in which he argues that neo-slavery ended in 1946 at the end of World War II. I remember Doug coming to Oakhurst to talk with our Supper Club about his book, and he made a very powerful presentation about his thesis that the years 1875-1945 were just “slavery by another name,” hence the title of his book. Although I learned a lot from his book, I do have one disagreement with his timetable on “neo-slavery.” From my experience growing up in the neo-slavery South from 1946-1964, the power of neo-slavery was still so strong in those years that “neo-slavery” should remain as the description for the years up to 1965, not 1946.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had a profound effect on life in the South, as evidenced by the rapid increase of Black people elected to office. It had a long and difficult history, and its importance was shown in the deep resistance of Southern white Democrats leading up to its passage. Perhaps only a skilled white Southern politician like President Lyndon Johnson could get it passed, and even he was reluctant to bring it to the floor of the Senate, where it originated. The civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery changed the directory of that arc bending towards justice. The march on March 7, 1965, that ended in police violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge exploded into the national consciousness (see Ava Duvernay’s movie “Selma” for more background on this). A second march on March 21 drew great participation, and President Johnson scheduled it for a vote in the Senate, where his arm-twisting overcame a filibuster. There is a great photo of Johnson corralling his longtime friend Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, seeking to get his vote for the bill. Johnson was not successful with Russell, but he was successful with enough Senators that the bill passed and was sent to the House, where it passed overwhelmingly. As Johnson noted, his embrace of the Voting Rights Act meant one other great change in the South – a switch of Southern white voters moving from the Democratic party to the Republican party.
The Voting Rights Act was one of the signal achievements of the Civil Rights movement and of American history. Its effect was so deep and powerful that the resistance has been great since its passage, and indeed, SCOTUS has significantly weakened it over the last decade, seeking to allow white people to limit voting rights by people of color as severely as possible. The Trumpster movement is built on this white resistance to the idea that “all people are created equal,” and his push to get Texas to gerrymander even further before the 2026 midterm elections is an indication that he wants to hold the white majority in the House in order to further return us to a time of white supremacy and maybe even neo-slavery. As the history on the Voting Rights Act shows us, this repressive and oppressive stream runs deeply in us and through us. We’ll look more closely at this history and its present status next week, but in the meantime, please re-train yourself to talk about “neo-slavery” rather than “Jim Crow.” And, take it out into the streets.
