Blacks have to be wary of Justice Thomas and his ultra conservative bedfellows
Alexis K. Barnes/Contributing Writer
Issue date: 7/5/09 Section: Politics
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"Our drive was very successful, but it opened my eyes to discrimination still taking place even today," said Fleetwood, a senior majoring in political science at Howard University. "Residents were being given false information mainly- wrong polling addresses and dates to vote."
One elderly couple told Fleetwood that they tried to register three different times and were told they could not vote but were not given a reason why not, Fleetwood recalled.
Fleetwood is rejoicing that Obama's success means Blacks have made significant progress on the cause of liberty in America. But she is sad that another Black man, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is hell bent on re-imposing voting barriers and dismantling whatever hiring gains Blacks have made under the Civil Rights Act.
Last month, Justice Thomas cast the lone vote against extending the 25-year-old Voting Rights Act's controversial Section 5. Calling the provision "unconstitutional", Thomas argued that race is no longer an issue in America. A week later, he voted in favor of New Haven, Connecticut, White firemen against that city's affirmative action initiative to promote more Black firemen.
"In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in order to guarantee that no citizen would be denied the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude," said Thomas. "Congress passed Section 5 of the VRA in 1965 because that promise had remained unfulfilled for far too long. But now, more than 40 years later, the violence, intimidation, and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this Court to uphold it no longer remains."
NAACP president Benjamin Jealous disagrees vehemently.
"While some may think that voter discrimination is a thing of the past, it is clear that it is not," Jealous told the District Chronicles. " Jim Crow might be dead but James Crow Esquire is alive and well, and while we may not see fire hoses and police dogs any longer, they have been replaced by false emails and polling station trickery."
Jealous applauded the Court's decision to uphold it with an overwhelming vote of 8 - 1.
Howard University Law School Professor Anderson B. Francois and his students have been working on this case in his Civil Rights Clinic where students take on real constitutional cases. They wrote an Amicus brief on behalf of Congressman John Lewis of Georgia who was an original freedom rider in the 1960s and was almost beaten to death protesting the lack of voting rights in the south.
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