Why is the state of democracy so precarious in certain American states like Tennessee? It is impossible to obtain an accurate portrait of the situation if we do not address the issue of racism. Participating in democratic life has always been a struggle for African-Americans. It is obviously not finished.
They say you have to know the past to understand the present.
When we analyze the failures of democracy in Tennessee, and particularly the ingenious ways put forward by the government to restrict the right to vote, we understand that the state has never completely turned the page on its segregationist past.
As in other states in the slave south of the country, history stutters.
After the end of slavery, the rights of black people continued to be violated overnight. Quite the contrary. Participating in democratic life has been a struggle for African-Americans.
On this subject, I interviewed Professor Learotha Williams Jr., of Tennessee State University, a sturdy and affable fellow who had arranged to meet me at the Farmers’ Market in Nashville. His gaze darkened quickly when I asked my questions.
At the end of the Civil War in 1865, blacks were officially able to vote in Tennessee. But that same year, just before Christmas, the Ku Klux Klan – the infamous white supremacist group whose members wore tunics with pointed hoods – was founded in the state.
“They used terror and intimidation to keep black people from going to the polls. So you had the right to vote, but you risked not doing so out of fear for your life,” says this professor of African-American history and public history at Tennessee State University.
In the years and decades that followed, Southern states put forward a series of initiatives aimed at restricting the rights of black people, including preventing them from voting (dubbed Jim Crow laws). For example, an electoral tax and various reading and writing tests were imposed.
For Learotha Williams Jr., what we are seeing today is a continuation of what happened in the past.
For example, he mentions the obligation, to vote, to obtain a driving license or another identity card recognized by the State.
It’s the equivalent of having to pay to vote. In many ways, this is a form of economic discrimination that will disproportionately affect black people.
Learotha Williams Jr., professor of African American history and public history at Tennessee State University
He also points out that in Tennessee, on voting day, there are long lines “which often appear in black neighborhoods.” In his eyes, this is no coincidence. This is because the state is not opening enough polling stations there.
PHOTO CB SCHMELTER, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Queue outside a polling station, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2020
Racism is also, according to him, at the source of the misfortunes of Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, the two African-American elected officials who were expelled from the Legislative Assembly in April 2023.
“We’ve had people in the House of Representatives who have behaved much worse than Jones and Pearson, but little or nothing has been said about it,” he says.
PHOTO JON CHERRY, THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
Justin Jones, one of two African-American elected officials expelled from the Tennessee Legislature, in April 2023
The situation is paradoxical, because Tennessee was a hotbed of the civil rights struggle between the 1950s and 1970s. “But as soon as the dust settled after that period, there was an effort to return to the way things were. anterior. »
At the end of the interview, when I wanted to take a photo of Learotha Williams Jr., we left the Farmers’ Market to enjoy the light outside.
PHOTO ALEXANDRE SIROIS, THE PRESS
Learotha Williams Jr., professor of African American and public history at Tennessee State University, in the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park in Nashville
I tell you this because just a few steps away is the Bicentennial Capitol Mall, where significant events in Tennessee’s history are inscribed on granite plaques. You can’t make this up: one of the first ones we saw commemorated the founding of the Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865.
“In the past, racism might have looked like a guy covered in a sheet and wearing a hood,” the professor said. Today he looks like a man wearing a three-piece suit, wearing a smile. »
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