You poor white folks are next
Download the report (PDF).
The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today
A Report by PFAW Foundation and NAACPIn a nation where children are taught in grade school that every citizen has the right to vote, it would be comforting to think that the last vestiges of voter intimidation, oppression and suppression were swept away by the passage and subsequent enforcement of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965. It would be good to know that voters are no longer turned away from the polls based on their race, never knowingly misdirected, misinformed, deceived or threatened.
Unfortunately, it would be a grave mistake to believe any of it.
In every national American election since Reconstruction, every election since the Voting Rights Act was passed, voters – particularly African American voters and other minorities – have faced calculated and determined efforts at intimidation and suppression. The bloody days of violence and retribution following the Civil War and Reconstruction are gone. The poll taxes, literacy tests and physical violence of the Jim Crow era have disappeared. Today, more subtle, cynical and creative tactics have taken their place.
