“Just Buy My Vote”

Joseph L. Simmons Jr.

Description

“Just Buy My Vote” is a detail account on the voting and political history of Chicago, which gives direction for the future.
It is a federal and state felony to buy or sell votes, or to offer to buy or sell votes, yet “Just Buy My Vote”: African American Voting Rights, and the Chicago Condition is a unique story that must be told. It is a story where I attempt to summarize without excruciating detail the relevant portions of nearly three centuries. “Just Buy My Vote” is also unique in that it covers race relations, black history and urban history; written from the perspective of the Southside of Chicago. “Just Buy My Vote” is intended to inform the reader about the significance of voting, by explaining voting rights in layman terms, with the use of the voting rights laws, history, philosophy, and sociology. It is an effort to raise the level of political consciousness among Americans, to help readers to realize the history of voting rights and be encouraged to use the power of the vote to further all of our best economic and social interests. Thankfully, in the presidential election of 2020, we got the voting part right! We now have a democracy to save.
“Just Buy My Vote” is a tale of two stories. First, it tells a story about how African Americans in this country attained the right to vote, and utilized that power to improve their lives, and the lives of many others, for future generations. And secondly, “Just Buy My Vote” uses Chicago as a case study of how voting rights and voter apathy, helped enable an old school “political villain” and his machine, to maintain a system of public and governmental corruption in Chicago for two decades. In my writing this book, I aimed to inform on history, and have also attempted to describe a journey, within a journey.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Political Process
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Social sciences
• African American
• History

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 23 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665579520
• Langue: English

Extrait

“JUST BUY MY VOTE”
 
 
African American Voting Rights, and the Chicago Condition
 
 
 
 
 
JOSEPH L. SIMMONS, JR.
 
 
 

 
 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
© 2023 Joseph L. Simmons, Jr. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 01/25/2023
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7953-7 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7951-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7952-0 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023900104
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Section I: History and Context of Voting Rights: A Chronology of African American Voting Rights
Chapter 1 Understanding Voting Rights: Only Some White Men Can Vote
Chapter 2 Freedom, Suffrage, and Terror: African Americans’ Tease at Democracy
Chapter 3 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Three Reconstructions: Striving To Level The Playing Field
Section II: Understanding the Chicago Tradition
Chapter 4 Historical Chicago Politics: Great Migration to the Black Metropolis
Chapter 5 The Original Mayor Daley (1955–1976): An Overrated Powerhouse
Chapter 6 Chicago African American Political Titans and Trendsetters
Section III: It Takes More than a Village to Enact Cultural Warfare
Chapter 7 Blue-on-Black Crime
Chapter 8 Da Mayor and the Regime That Put Chicago in Crisis
Notes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I dedicate this book to my dear friend in heaven, Bruce Crosby. We worked on the original idea of this book together, back while working on numerous campaigns on the South Side. Bruce supported me in my Eighteenth Ward efforts, and he was instrumental to my deeper interest in voting rights. Bruce had a great smile and laughter, and those who knew him know he committed his life to voting rights.
I also want to thank the younger brother, Will Crosby, a strong member and advisor in the Chicago Black community and an expert on voting rights and redistricting. I, of course, want to thank my father, my example of fatherhood. He backed me up all my life, and he has been the wind beneath my wings.
And a special thanks to my son, Joey. He reviewed many versions of chapters and gave me valuable feedback in between his college courses. It takes a village.
INTRODUCTION
The preamble to the United States Constitution begins with the words “We, the people.” Therefore, supposedly “We, the People,” by way of the American voting system, determine the lawmakers and appointees that we, as citizens, pay and trust to govern our country. Therefore, in theory, our voting determines the laws that we live by on a local, state, and national level. It follows that in America, and every city and town within, our electoral decisions determine the basis of our collective, current, and future living conditions. Voter participation and turnout are the bottom line on voting and impacting the system in which we live. However, there remain too many Americans who are not registered—and even more who are qualified to vote but typically don’t bother to show up on Election Day. The nearly 56 percent voting age population turnout in 2016 put the US behind most developed democratic nations in the world for voting participation. Then in 2020, we sprang back in a historic way, in the most divisive and consequential presidential election in many lifetimes.
The presidential election of 2020 ironically, one hundred years after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, and fifty-five years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, seems like poetic justice. The 2020 presidential election had a historic turnout, the highest turnout in more than a century, at least in part because Donald Trump and his Trumpism was so divisive to the nation. It was arguably the most incompetent, irresponsible, and worst administration in the history of the republic, and their mismanagement of the global c oronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 99 million Americans and caused more than one million American deaths. And still, there was so much more on the ballot, including a tattered economy with a huge financial deficit attached, major layoffs with record unemployment, many small businesses closing, overwhelming food lines, a looming eviction crisis, four years of exhaustion from openly governmental corruption, and extremely exacerbated racial inequalities and unrest worsened by a racially divisive president. One of Trump’s worst features and effects was that he “amplified and reanimated” racism into the open.
Voter participation was off the charts and up on both sides. Voter turnout was at least 65 percent as a share of the voting-eligible population. Coincidentally, the last time the nation’s turnout level was 65 percent was in 1908, the same year Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. was founded at Howard University. And the first woman elected vice president, Kamala Harris, is a member of the AKA sorority and founding chapter. More than eighty million people voted for the Biden-Harris ticket. More people voted for Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris than any other presidential ticket in history. Biden received approximately 87 percent of the Black vote, performing better among Black voters than any other demographic group. Joe Biden publicly admitted himself that his election was in large part due to the support he received from the Black community across the country.
There are years of evidence that turnout varies considerably among different racial, ethnic, and age groups. The Pew Research Center report (May 2018) noted the Black voter turnout rate had declined for the first time in twenty years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6 percent in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6 percent in 2012 with President Obama on the ballot. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the Black voter turnout rate surpassed that of White voters for the first time. Black turnout was a substantial 7-percentage-point decline for the following presidential election with Hillary Clinton on the ticket. Despite the global pandemic, given all the circumstances and urgencies in the monumentally historic year of 2020, despite immense attempts and various forms of voter suppression in several counties and states, Black voters turned it up and out, and they were pivotal for Biden-Harris.
By far, the crescendo to the most infamous year of 2020 was the defeat of Donald Trump. One proud Black voter emerged from the polls in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Election Day, November 3, 2020, and mentioned with pride about the Black vote, “We went from picking cotton to picking presidents.” To that, I say, “Just Buy My Vote.”
Historically, the Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave them citizenship. But the key to the First Reconstruction was the Fifteenth Amendment, “guaranteeing” male former slaves the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” That First Reconstruction era was a remarkably brief Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, which I refer to as the African Americans’ “Tease at Democracy.” It was followed by an era of White violence, lynch mobs of White supremacy, and ninety years of violent Jim Crow rule. It took nearly one hundred years for the Second Reconstruction to emerge, spurred by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the civil rights movement, and culminating with the election and reelection of President Barack Obama.
Voter apathy and voter suppression contribute to the corruption and gridlock we see in our government today and throughout history. Just Buy My Vote: African American Voting Rights and the Chicago Condition is intended to inform the reader about the significance of voting by explaining voting rights in layman’s terms with the use of the voting rights laws, history, philosophy, and sociology. Just Buy My Vote is an effort to raise the level of political sophistication among all Americans, meaning helping every reader realize and be encouraged to use the power of the vote to further each and everyone’s best economic and social interests. Because with voter participation comes the power of having your collective interests addressed and concerns embraced.
Just Buy My Vote is a tale of two stories. First, it tells a story about how African Americans in this country attained the right to vote and utilized that power to improve their lives, and the lives of many others, for future generations. Secondly, Just Buy My Vote uses Chicago as a case study of how voting rights and voter apathy helped enable an old-school political villain and his machine to maintain a system of public and governmental corruption in Chicago for two decades. This discussion must include the Black community’s complicity (BCC) in this negative cycle. Just Buy My Vote provides a brief history of Chicago politics, my home sweet home Chicago. The story of Chicago politics is a story of ma