From Every Mountainside: Black Churches and the Broad Terrain of Civil Rights

Chapter 9: Black Churches and Black Voter Suppression in Florida and Ohio

9 Black Churches and Black Voter Suppression in Florida and Ohio Maurice Mangum Introduction Preserving and protecting black voting rights has been a constant struggle , dating back to the 1870s. One of the great beacons within the black community in countering vote suppression has been the black church, which is interpreted in this analysis as any congregation with a predominantly black membership. Black churches were integral to countering the Jim Crow laws in the South and the machine politics of the North and to ensuring that black votes counted. Through intimidation tactics, Jim Crow laws, and manipulation, black voters have repeatedly had their votes suppressed, or in some cases nullified entirely. Black churches and black clergy are needed now as much as they were after Reconstruction and during the mid-twentieth century. Since blacks vote primarily for the Democratic Party, a method of guaranteeing victory for the Republican Party in presidential elections has been to suppress the black vote.1 In predominantly black Florida communities in 2000 and predominantly black Ohio communities in 2004, many black voters were prevented from voting at their precincts due to various ploys including “caging,” roadblocks, manipulation, long lines, faulty voting machines, misinformation about polling locations, and intimidation and harassment. Also, many ballots were reportedly discarded, disqualified , or lost. In both elections, the Bush Administration created problems in the voting precincts where large turnouts of black voters were anticipated . In Florida in 2000, more than 90 percent of its black citizens cast their votes only to learn that thousands of those votes were discarded. 189 190 Maurice Mangum Approximately 357,000 black voters were disenfranchised in Ohio in 2004. They were either prevented from voting or had their votes discarded. Suppressing black votes is viewed by some as necessary for the Republican Party to win elections.2 This chapter details responses by black churches and black clergy to widespread allegations of a suppression of black votes that may have influenced the outcomes in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections . The chapter examines myriad voting irregularities and methods to disenfranchise voters in the 2000 presidential election in Florida and the 2004 presidential election in Ohio and addresses ways black churches and black clergy combat new forms of voter suppression. This investigation finds that although black churches and black clergy have been strongly supportive of their communities and strongly motivated to ensuring the rights of their parishioners, their impact has been modest in countering black voter suppression. While many black churches and black clergy within Florida and Ohio adhered to longstanding black church commitments to improving the community and ensuring equal social and political rights, black churches within these contexts were notably silent or reactive toward problems facing black voters, including voter suppression and disenfranchisement. Two sections are provided to discuss in detail black voter suppression during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 in Florida and Ohio, respectively. While voter suppression may be employed as a general political tactic (irrespective of any racial connotation) to diminish the chances of the opponent winning, the chapter makes clear that in the Florida and Ohio cases efforts to subvert voting targeted blacks, not Democratic voters as a whole, and clearly affected black Democrats more negatively than white Democrats. Another section summarizes responses by black churches and clergy to presumed suppression of the black vote in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. Differences are noted in black religious responses to the two contexts, with black churches and black clergy more active in Florida in 2000 than they were in Ohio in 2004. The final section concludes with a discussion of the similarities and differences in the level of black religious responses to black voter suppression since the 1960s, and also describes what black churches and clergy did differently for the 2008 presidential elections to ensure that voter suppression and disenfranchisement were not repeated in Florida and Ohio. A Brief History of Black Voter Suppression Voter suppression is electoral fraud that refers to using campaign strategies , governmental power, or private resources to reduce votes from a 191 Black Churches and Black Voter Suppression segment of voters (as opposed to simply changing voting preferences by influencing opinions of potential voters). Voter suppression has come in various forms. Procedures and practices that amounted to restrictions included poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, black codes, gerrymandering , and white-only primaries.3 Poll taxes refer to fees that had to...