Give Us the Ballot Quotes

“After Obama’s victory, 395 new voting restrictions were introduced in 49 states from 2011 to 2015. Following the Tea Party’s triumph in the 2010 elections, half the states in the country, nearly all of them under Republican control—from Texas to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania—passed laws making it harder to vote. The sudden escalation of efforts to curb voting rights most closely resembled the Redemption period that ended Reconstruction, when every southern state adopted devices like literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise African-American voters.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“Daddy, why are we going to the Capitol?” she asked her father. “Luci Baines, we have to go to the Capitol,” Johnson said to his daughter. “It’s the only place to go. As a result of this great legislation becoming the law of the land, there will be many men and women who will not be returning to these hallowed halls because of the decision they have made to support it. And because of this great legislation that I will be signing into law, there will be many men and women who will have an opportunity to come to the halls of Congress who could have never have come otherwise.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“In the general election, Nixon refined Goldwater’s southern strategy. Unlike Goldwater, who “ran as a racist candidate,” Nixon said, the 1968 GOP nominee campaigned on racial themes without explicitly mentioning race. “Law and order” replaced “states’ rights.” Pledging to weaken the enforcement of civil rights laws replaced outright opposition to them. Nixon “always couched his views in such a way that a citizen could avoid admitting to himself that he was attracted by a racist appeal,” said his top aide, John Ehrlichman.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“The Dallas Times Herald ran a cartoon mocking the [Reagan] administration's position. "We don't oppose the extension of the Voting Rights Act ... but we think the test of discrimination should be intent not effect," a fictional Smith said at a press conference. "Won't that cripple enforcement of the Act?" a reporter asked. "That is not our intent," Smith responded.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“For a country that is famous for exporting democracy across the globe and has branded itself as the shining city on the hill, the United States has a shameful history when it comes to embracing one of its most basic rights at home. In 1787, when the founders ratified the Constitution, only white male property owners could vote in the eleven states of the Union. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, black men could cast a ballot freely in only five states. Women couldn’t vote until 1920. The remarkably brief Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, when there were twenty-two black members of Congress from the South and six hundred black state legislators, was followed by ninety years of Jim Crow rule. The United States is the only advanced democracy that has ever enfranchised, disenfranchised, and then reenfranchised an entire segment of the population. Despite our many distinctions as a democracy, the enduring debate over who can and cannot participate in it remains a key feature of our national character.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“The unfortunate reality is that, even today, too many citizens have reason to fear that their right to vote, their access to the ballot--and their ability to have their votes counted--is under threat." --Eric Holder, quoted in Give Us the Ballot”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“The Right to Vote," wrote Justice William Douglas, "is too precious, too fundamental, to be burdened or conditioned.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“Reconstruction prompted a vicious white backlash, which gained traction following the disputed election of 1876, when the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes pulled federal troops out of the South in return for the electoral votes of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Segregationist whites, known as Redeemers, regained power and quickly targeted black voters, first through violence and fraud and then via devices like literacy and good character tests, poll taxes, and stringent residency requirements. Mississippi became the first state to change its constitution to disenfranchise black voters in 1890. Every other southern state quickly followed. Black voters disappeared seemingly overnight.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“Selma became a major slave-trading port. The city passed twenty-seven ordinances regulating the behavior of slaves, stipulating, for example, that “any Negro found upon the streets of the city smoking a cigar or pipe or carrying a walking cane must be on conviction punished with 39 lashes.” During the Civil War, Selma manufactured weapons for the Confederacy and was commanded by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“The previous civil rights acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964 had failed, he explained, by relying on obstructionist southern courts to adjudicate voting rights cases on a lengthy case-by-case basis. The DOJ had filed seventy-one voting rights lawsuits since 1961, but only 31 percent of eligible black citizens were registered to vote in seven southern states. From 1958 to 1964 the number of African-Americans registered rose by only 2 percent in Mississippi and 5 percent in Alabama. “The lesson is plain,” said Katzenbach. “The three present statutes have had only minimal effect. They have been too slow.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“The Supreme Court was just one aspect of the administration’s judicial strategy. By the end of his time in office, Reagan had appointed half of all federal judges: 78 to the court of appeals and 280 to the district court. To a startling degree, the judges reflected the ideology and makeup of the Reagan administration: of the appointees, 94 percent were white, 95 percent were male, and 95 percent were Republican.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“The most important feature of the law eliminated literacy tests and other disenfranchising devices in states where less than 50 percent of eligible voters had registered or cast ballots in the 1964 presidential election, which covered Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and thirty-four counties in North Carolina, along with Alaska; Apache County, Arizona; Elmore County, Idaho; and Aroostook County, Maine. This formula, though imperfect, captured the key southern states where the bulk of black voters were disenfranchised. “We”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“When the Louisiana senator Russell Long walked in to cast his yes vote, a reporter asked why he opposed an intent test for Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act]. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Long responded.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“to curb”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“It would be written in the history books,” Luci Baines Johnson said. “But now the history had to be made.”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“Viola Liuzzo,”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

“Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”
― Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America