By Michael Tomsic, July 13, 2015
A federal trial in Winston-Salem, N.C., that begins Monday will have big implications for voting rights in the state and, potentially, across the country.
The U.S. Justice Department and several groups are suing North Carolina over the sweeping election overhaul it passed two years ago, which narrowed the early voting period, among other provisions.
That early voting window had resulted in a noticeable uptick in the number of minority voters.
For more on this NPR story go to: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/13/421739909/n-c-trial-outcome-could-sway-national-voting-rights-measures
David W. Blight
The story of voter suppression, especially the votes of African Americans, is a very long story in the United States. The North Carolina court case testing the legality of the latest Republican party efforts to limit access to registration, the number of voting days, and to alternative polling stations, not to mention voter ID laws, will be a very good test of the recent rhetoric of white Southerners and Republican party politicians in the wake of the Charleston murders and the removal of the Confederate flag from official sites. Only when a Republican official, or a presidential candidate, stands up and admits that all these voting restriction measures are simply wrong, and that they reflect a long history of racial exclusion for which the Confederate flag has stood as a symbol, will we know that a genuine change has come over our racial and political landscape. "Take down the flag" should now be a campaign for "take back the voter restriction laws!"
Voter Suppression, Then and Now | The New York Times (The Opinion Pages)
By David Blight, September 6, 2012
SUPPRESSING the black vote is a very old story in America, and it has never been just a Southern thing.
In 1840, and again in 1841, the former Frederick Bailey, now Frederick Douglass, walked a few blocks from his rented apartment on Ray Street in New Bedford, Mass., to the town hall, where he paid a local tax of $1.50 to register to vote. Born a slave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1818, Douglass escaped in an epic journey on trains and ferry boats, first to New York City, and then to the whaling port of New Bedford in 1838...
Read the full article here: NYTimes.com