Supreme Court’s Blow to Right to Protest Is Another Attack on Black Political Power

The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene in a case involving a prominent Black Lives Matter advocate could have a chilling effect on people hoping to organize and demand racial justice.

The high court on Monday virtually outlawed the right to mass protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas when it declined to step in and overturn a decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has been engaged in a yearslong campaign against DeRay Mckesson.

A high-profile Black Lives Matter figure, Mckesson was sued by a police officer who was seriously injured at a 2016 rally in Baton Rouge following the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling. The officer insisted that Mckesson, the leader of the protest, ought to be held responsible because he “knew or should have known” that violence was possible.

The high court’s inaction goes beyond Mckesson and protests. It’s about race, power, and whose voices are heard and whose are muzzled in our fragile multiracial democracy. It’s also part of a much wider pattern of diminishing Black political strength, particularly in the Deep South.

This month, Mississippi state Sen. Angela Burks Hill, a Republican, thwarted a significant, bipartisan legislative effort to restore voting rights to people with nonviolent felony convictions after they serve their sentences. It was a stunning turn: The law that permanently disenfranchises people convicted of certain low-level offenses disproportionately burdens Black Americans, and is rooted in Mississippi’s 1890 constitutional convention. The express objective of the assembly was, according to one delegate, to “secure to the state of Mississippi white supremacy.”

Former Mississippi Gov. James K. Vardaman put it even more bluntly: “There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter … Mississippi’s constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the [N-word] from politics.”

Separately, the full 5th Circuit is revisiting a challenge to the Jim Crow-era law, and it could release an opinion any day now. Last August, a three-judge panel on the circuit struck down the law, explaining that it violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. But then the state successfully requested a rehearing.

Mississippi is hardly the only state with harsh felony disenfranchisement laws. Numerous states, especially in the South, ban millions of Americans from the democratic process based on their prior felony convictions.

Just last month, a federal judge gave the OK for a lawsuit challenging Virginia’s broad permanent disenfranchisement law to proceed. The plaintiffs argue that the law violates the Virginia Readmission Act, one of many federal laws enacted after the Civil War to safeguard the rights of newly freed Black Americans in former Confederate states. These laws sought to limit disenfranchisement to people convicted of a specific set of crimes, so that states couldn’t abuse their authority and target Black Americans.

Still, the situation in Mississippi is particularly striking. Black residents form 36% of the state’s voting-age population — the highest percentage in the country — but nearly 60% of its disenfranchised population, according to The Sentencing Project.

To discuss the future of Black political power in Mississippi, Capital B spoke with Waikinya Clanton, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi state office. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Capital B: Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black residents, who incline to the left. But it’s a ruby red state — a conservative bastion. How are you feeling as the 2024 election heats up?

Waikinya Clanton: Well, the elections last November were bittersweet.

On the one hand, there was all the chaos around ballot shortages and long lines and things like that. Majority-Black Hinds County is where we had one of the largest opportunities to really tip the scales and where people had been doing so much work to engage voters — voters who had been horribly let down by elected leaders. So when you do all that work to engage voters and they show up but they can’t participate, that situation puts a wrinkle in the fabric.

On the other hand, there was all this momentum — energy — around turnout and what was possible here in Mississippi. And this feeling presents a huge opportunity for us to double down on voter registration efforts and connect with our communities in real and meaningful ways.

What are your thoughts on Mississippi’s Jim Crow-era felony disenfranchisement law?

People who have served their time should be afforded their right to go back and vote. The original ruling that came out of the 5th Circuit [in August 2023] said that a lifetime ban was unconstitutional because it’s cruel and unusual punishment. We believe that that stands. It should be the case that people have the right to return to the electoral process. That’s part of your citizenship. That’s part of getting your full humanity back.

How do you plan on engaging young Black voters, many of whom have soured on President Joe Biden and the political process more broadly?

Reaching young Black voters is the same no matter where you are — whether you’re in Mississippi or New York or D.C. or California. Young people don’t want to be lectured. They want to be engaged. They care about what’s happening around them. We’re working with young people to share not only historical information, but also current information about what’s at stake. We’re taking the time to do cultural organizing — we should be where they are and talk with them in language they can understand.

We’re also working to give them space to own the narrative around change. That’s really important for shaping their civic participation. I think that sometimes we spend so much time talking at people that we don’t give them an opportunity to share their thoughts or opinions in a way that makes this a true, inclusive democracy.

Read More: Are We Really in the Middle of a ‘Racial Realignment’ in Politics?

I’ll give you a good example of our work. We have an umbrella initiative called Activate Mississippi. We marry art, activism, and voter education. As part of the initiative this past election cycle, we did the Defenders of Democracy campaign, and this was a multifaceted, multigenerational campaign that looked to engage young people — people from elementary school all the way through college. For one activity, we wrote a comic book that talked about voting in Mississippi.

We didn’t just want young people to see themselves in the narrative. We wanted them to see themselves as part of reimagining what democracy can look like and feel like in Mississippi. We also hosted voter engagement town halls, as well as get-out-the-vote efforts that involved a hip-hop text-a-thon that played on the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. These are the kinds of activities that can really energize people who feel left out of the process and out of the conversation. We’re just intentional about going deeper.

What are your organizing priorities in the months ahead?

This summer marks the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer [a large-scale effort to register Black voters in Mississippi], and we have a campaign called the Road to 60: Reigniting the Fight for Freedom, Voter Education, and Empowerment. So we’re really focusing on training, organizing, and registering people to vote.

So my entire summer is going to be dedicated to that legacy — reflecting on it and also expanding on it. We’re asking: What does it mean to build on the legacy of Freedom Summer in 2024? We’re trying to give it a new face and some new energy.

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