When I turned 17, my aunt Luethel invited me to Thanksgiving at her home in New Jersey. She paid for my flight, offered to take me shopping and bought tickets for the entire family to see the Broadway show Mama I Want to Sing. She dispatched me to the mall with my older cousin, Venechia. After purchasing an entire acid-washed wardrobe, I saw a sign for the urban clothing store Merry Go Round. Suddenly, nothing else mattered.
I was finally going to get some Cross Colours.
Started by two fashion designers who grew up in Jim Crow Mississippi and Tennessee, Cross Colours was one of the first streetwear brands to embrace hip-hop. Besides featuring bright colors and Afrocentric designs, every piece of apparel featured the slogan “clothing without prejudice.” I wanted some Cross Colours so bad. Unfortunately, I lived in the South, where white-owned department stores didn’t sell those hippity-hop brands.
To be fair, the biggest reason they didn’t sell Cross Colours was that the old white Southerners who worked in department store chains didn’t know about it. Plus, the brand didn’t need to advertise because they were selling their products as fast as they could make them. Black people knew about it. That was enough.
Anyway, I loaded up on Cross Colours and met my cousin at the checkout counter. Venechia reached into her purse and…
Nothing.
Apparently, someone had pickpocketed my cousin, and everything was gone. Her wallet was not there. The Broadway tickets were gone. The checkbook that she was using for my shopping spree was gone. Most importantly, there was no Cross Colours for Mikey.
Four or five years later, I received a frantic call from my aunt. Venechia had been arrested! It turns out, instead of telling her mom, my cousin just canceled all the checks, including the ones she had already used. One of the stores filed charges, and she had to go to court and clear up the mess
“They’re trying to charge me with a felony!” my cousin explained, tearfully over the phone. “I just need an affidavit from you explaining everything.”
At the time, I was in college. So I had to find a lawyer, tell this entire story to a paralegal, who wrote it down on a form that I signed. The paralegal notarized it, placed it in a sealed envelope that I also had to sign, and sent it to the court. Of course, to ensure that the lawyer, the judge and the prosecutors didn’t think my aunt Luethel was a scammer, I explained the entire history of Cross Colours to the annoyed paralegal. Her only reply was: “Your cousin better be glad she ain’t in Mississippi.”
I had no idea what she meant.
Anyway, that’s how I learned what “affidavit” means.
This process is similar to what Mississippi voters have to do if:
They have registered to vote, but their name is missing from the official voter rolls
They have moved but are still registered in the same county
They do not have an acceptable form of photo ID to present at the polls on Election Day
They cast a ballot after the polls officially closed but were kept open under a court order
To be clear, if you show up to vote in Mississippi, and they don’t allow you to vote, they don’t automatically hand you a voter affidavit form. You have to ask for it, fill out the affidavit correctly and hope the poll manager fills it out correctly. And place it in the envelope correctly. And hope the post office delivers it in five days. And hope the voter registration office opens it. And counts your vote. They don’t call you. You just have to hope.
This is how voter suppression works.
While Mississippi consistently ranks at the top (or bottom, depending on your perspective) of the list of states that make it hard for voters to cast a ballot, the Magnolia State is not unique. According to the Campaign Legal Center, seven of the 10 states with the highest Black populations earned “restrictive” and “most restrictive” scores, noting that “every state except Mississippi allows voters to track their absentee ballots online, so voters are able [to] find out if their ballot arrived in time to be counted.”
Mississippi also has one of the most extreme disenfranchisement laws. According to a study by the Sentencing Project, the state’s lifetime voting ban for felons disenfranchises more of its population than any other state. For Black Mississippians, it’s even worse. More than 130,000 Black people—or 16% of the state’s Black voting-age population—are banned from voting for the rest of their lives.
But here’s the thing:
It doesn’t work. Besides the tiny population of Black people in Oregon (2.2%), Black Mississippians have the highest voter turnout rate in America. It is one of the few states where Black people turn out to vote at higher rates (70.8%) than whites (69.4%). Oregon is the other. But if you think the Beaver State deserves the Black voting crown, consider this:
More than 130,500 Black people have been disenfranchised in Mississippi.
There are only 54,000 Black people in Oregon who are old enough to vote.
If you're wondering why Mississippi does that, it’s simple.
Black people in Mississippi are 2.7 times more likely to have been convicted of a disenfranchising felony. About 83% of Black voters in Mississippi vote Democrat. If you removed those voter restrictions, and the formerly disenfranchised voters turned out like everyone else, an additional 91,000 more Black Democrats would show up to the polls. About 43,000 more white Republicans would show up to the polls.
That’s why.
It’s perfectly fine to celebrate Scott Colom’s election. But the fact that he is the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction is a testament to the power and resilience of white supremacy.
Here’s another story.
In 1890, when Mississippi was 57.6% Black and 42.2% white, 133 of the most powerful white men in the state convened for a special purpose. “We came here to exclude the negro,” the constitutional convention delegates explained. “What are you here for, if not to maintain white supremacy?”
Besides poll taxes, literacy tests and the infamous grandfather clause, the delegates came up with a novel way to keep Black people from voting.
See, Mississippi doesn’t disenfranchise all felons.
“The crimes they picked were those they believed, based on prejudices, Black people were more likely to commit,” The Guardian reports. “Bribery, burglary, theft, arson, bigamy and embezzlement were among the crimes that would cause someone to lose their voting rights. Robbery and murder were not.”
They knew Black people were not more violent. While the state eventually added violent crimes to the list of disenfranchising felonies, in Mississippi, the easiest way to be disenfranchised is just to be poor. For instance, “timber larceny” is on the list of “Black crimes.” That’s because landowners could keep Black sharecroppers from voting by just cutting down a tree and blaming the tenants. Bigamy was included to punish Black people who remarried without a formal divorce.
Or, let’s say you were a 17-year-old kid who went to the mall with a cousin who tried to secretly cancel a check before their mom found out what happened. In Mississippi, that’s forgery. Or shoplifting. Receiving stolen property. Or “felony bad check.” All of these are non-violent crimes that could get a Black person disenfranchised.
White supremacy is truly remarkable.
But not as remarkable as Black people.
Today’s Reading List
The Uncle Conundrum by Michael Harriot
Dear Debate Moderators, There Are More ‘Black Issues’ Besides Crime and Poverty by Michael Harriot
The Troll’s Comeuppance by Adam Serwer
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