Jim Crow in DC. Today.

Disenfranchisement of voters in D.C. has a history. 

It is "Jim Crow" thinking. 

Jim Crow thinking is about race. It is also about power. Simply power.

In the years after the Civil War a few Black Americans made their way into the federal Civil Service. After his election in 1912, President Woodrow Wilson began reversing that. His new Secretary of the Treasury, William McAdoo said segregation in his department was necessary "to remove the causes of complaint and irritation where white women have been forced unnecessarily to sit at desks with colored men.”

Through most history of Washington, D.C. Blacks have been free, but second class. Black Americans were first present mostly as slaves but by the early Republic--Presidents Monroe and Jackson--a majority of Blacks were free citizens. In April 1862, nine months before the Emancipation Act of 1863, Congress passed District of Columbia's own Emancipation Act. The District was legally a free city--but deeply segregated by law and policy.

Click: Mapping segregation

The status of the majority-Black residents of The District has long had a slave-to-owner, and then low-status employee-to-owner quality. They are present and useful, but they aren't citizens or co-owners of the enterprise. They have the right to do as they are told. They are governed. They are subjects. As Jennifer Angelo described in yesterday's post, government is by absentee overseers in Congress. That is the status quo, and 700,000 Americans are dis-enfranchised.

This blog has said multiple times over the past five years how useless, indeed counter-productive, it is for the political left to ascribe racial animus to Republican political behaviors, even if they perceive it to be obvious. It backfires, always. People resent being accused of racial prejudice. People do not see it or admit it in ourselves. We dig in, mentally. Thus, the appeals in fundraising letters from GOP officeholders are all about stopping cancel culture. Democrats accuse us of racism. How dare they! We are the victims.

McAdoo did not say his reason for wanting removal of Black employees was racism. Rather, it was a matter of sound administration and office morale. I observe a race-linked history to District disenfranchisement, but there is another, sufficient reason. It is about power. It is just hardball political self-interest for Republicans to stop the addition of two Democratic senators.

Jack Mullen

Disenfranchised D.C. isn't consistent with American democratic principles, but it is the way of the world, now and always. As described by Thucydides the Athenians said they did not want to bother arguing the morality of their planned subjugation of the island of Melos. It wasn't about morality or fairness or principle, the Athenians said. It was simply a matter of power and will. They wanted Melos paying tribute and in subjugation, simple as that. "The strong do what they want and the weak suffer as they must."

And there we are today. The human mind can create a non-racist, non-selfish facially-neutral reason for justifying it: History. Republicans say the District isn't a state and that is the way the Founders wrote it up. Sorry, not our fault. No, you don't get a vote.

Jack Mullen is a friend from my youth. We picked pears side by side for Naumes orchards. Later we worked together for a Democratic populist Congressman, Jim Weaver, a Democrat swept into office in the 1974 post-Watergate wave. Mullen now lives in Washington, D.C.

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

One of my most vivid childhood memories is seeing my parents, dressed in their Sunday finest, leaving our house after diner, to go vote.  It may sound corny, but I dreamed of the day when I too could vote.  

My dream came true when as a young adult I accompanied my parents to Hoover School in Medford Oregon, and cast my ballot for my favorite candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.  That was an emotional day for me, to be able to cast and have my vote count in the world’s longest established democracy.  Not only did I feel a strong bond with my parents, but also with all those throughout the country who, I trust, never take our citizenship for granted. 

Little did I realize that in 2021, efforts to suppress voting would be thrust forward in 43 state legislatures.

 President Rutherford B Hayes, a Civil War Colonel who fought alongside General Phil Sheridan in Shenandoah Valley campaign, turned his back on Reconstruction.  President Ulysses S. Grant, Hayes’ superior officer in the Union Army, nurtured the passage of the 15^th Amendment giving the right to vote for all Americans. Hayes, as President, gave a big wink and nod to Jim Crow and we feel the singe to this day. 

It might be the legacy of Jim Crow, or just an overall national distrust engendered by mere mention of the name Washington D.C. that makes legislators deny Washingtonians the right to vote for Congress?

 It bothers me that states like Wyoming and Vermont, with much smaller populations than Washington D.C., have two members each in the Senate. 

 What bothers me even more is that statehood denial played a big part in the January 6 insurrection.  In 50 states of the Union, the Governor has the authority to immediately call the National Guard into action.  In Washington, the Mayor has no authority to call the National Guard and the tragic mix-up in the chain of command in Washington reminded me of the Abbott and Costello ‘Who’s on First’ routine. Only there is no humor when the Vice President and the Speaker of the House narrowly escaped the mob that entered the Capitol. My, how the ghosts of Jefferson Davis is pleased to see the Confederate flag finally flying inside the U.S. Capitol.  

Mullen, 1965

If nothing else, the attempted insurrection on January 6 put on full display the need for D.C. statehood.  And, by the way, I’d like a full vote like I had with my parents back at Hoover School.

[Note: Of interest to Oregon readers: In a high school basketball game Mullen jumped to catch a pass from fellow-senior Bill Enyart. Bill went on to be known as Earthquake Enyart, an All American fullback for Oregon State. OSU beat USC in an historic game that pitted OJ Simpson's team against OSU. Oregon State won.]