THE JELLY BEAN VOTING TEST: THERE WAS NOTHING SWEET ABOUT IT
JELLY BEANS
Have you ever been in a shop or at an event, and there was a game asking you to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, so that you could potentially win a prize? Sounds like easy and yummy fun, right?
No one knows exactly when jelly beans first arrived in the US, but they have been here for well over 100 years. They were a popular penny candy by the late 19th Century, and were common enough by 1905 for “jelly bean” to have been included in Webster’s dictionary. They are now available in dozens of flavors, and National Jelly Bean Day is April 22nd.
President Ronald Reagan was known for his love of jelly beans. In fact, he kept an ever-present jar on The Resolute Desk in The Oval Office (to try to wean himself from cigarettes) and famously said: “You can tell a lot about a fella's character by his way of eating jellybeans.” You can even purchase a jar of Reagan / Jelly Belly® jelly beans from The Reagan Library, for $37, if the jar is glass, or $100, if the jar is crystal.
So, it is sad that a sweet treat could have been weaponized to implement voter suppression.
Imagine if you were forced to play the Jelly Bean Guessing ‘Game,’ and if you did not guess the exact answer, you were cruelly and capriciously denied your vote.
This was just one example of what African-Americans endured under Jim Crow Laws, as regards to voting.
JIM CROW
Jim Crow emerged after the last enslaved people in Texas were finally notified on June 19th, 1865 that they were free (2 years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation).
Jim Crow laws were in place and enforced for just over 100 years until 1968, and they were created by State and Local governments to make racial segregation legal.
Jim Crow was a popular minstrel show character (a White man, who performed in Blackface and used stereotyped, racist tropes that dehumanized Black people), created and performed by entertainer, Thomas D. Rice.
The people who created and enforced these laws were former slaveowners and / or members of the Ku Klux Klan – or at the very least, sympathizers of both.
The segregation was wide-ranging, and while most prevalent in the Southern States, that had wanted to secede and fought in The Civil War in order to keep slavery legal, there were some Northern States that enforced segregation, such as in schools and in the military.
Jim Crow Laws included segregated or no-service restaurants, drinking water fountains, restrooms, train/streetcar/bus travel, schools, waiting rooms, marriages, adoptions, and more – but probably most egregiously, voting.
VOTER SUPPRESSION
People who intentionally or unintentionally attempted to defy Jim Crow laws were arrested, at best, and beaten and murdered, at worst. Attempts to vote employed the most devious and violent resistance.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (1868) granted African-Americans the rights of citizenship (until then, they had been property and were only considered three-fifths of a free person).
However, citizenship rarely ensured that Black men could vote (Women were granted the right to vote in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was passed and some Northern Black women were able to register to vote and be active in politics. However, Southern Black women faced significant barriers to registering to vote. CLICK HERE to Read my 2020 Black History Month blog about it HERE) .
Black voters were systematically turned away from polling places because there was no law that declared that Black people must be allowed to vote. So, to combat this problem, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which says:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Yet, those Southern States still found ways to circumvent the 15th Amendment and prevent Black people from voting. Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud, and terrifying intimidation all turned African-Americans away from the polls – denying them their vote.
Until the Supreme Court struck it down in 1915, many States used the "Grandfather Clause" to keep descendants of slaves out of the electoral process. The Clause said you could not vote unless your grandfather had voted, which instantly disqualified most men because their ancestors were slaves.
Over the 10 decades of Jim Crow, the 10-minute, time-limited, often 30-question literacy tests were impossible, and asked questions such as:
- “How many seeds are there in a watermelon?”
- “How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?”
- “Name all of the past Senators in the State of Mississippi”
- “Write the word ‘vote’ upside down and backwards”
- “Write right from the left to the right, as you see it spelled here
- And of course, “How many jelly beans are in this jar?”
Almost everyone failed the Literacy Test, and you will see that even today, people fail the Louisiana Literacy test, for example.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH PEOPLE TRY TO TAKE THE LITERACY TEST HERE (AND APOLOGIES TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE OFFENDED OVER A BIT OF SWEARING)
POLL TAX
If by some miracle, you were able to pass the literacy test, and the people in charge acknowledged that you had passed, you were then forced to pay for your right to vote – a poll tax. Certainly, for the first 40-50 years, most Black people in the South were very poor and could not afford to pay the poll tax. For instance, $1.00 in 1910 would be worth $32.00 in 2024.
There were impediments to voting at every turn, and to make it worse, your attempt to vote was published in the newspaper, which might cause you to lose your job for being ‘uppity’ and ‘not knowing your place.’
Black people might also have the KKK burn a cross in the family’s front yard or try to intimidate you not to try to register to vote or vote, or even beat you or lynch you for trying to exercise your right to vote.
ROSA PARKS
Many people think that Rosa Parks’s Civil Rights Activism began when she refused to give up her seat on the bus. Actually, her focus started with wanting to register to vote in the 1940s. She was appalled that Black people, including her younger brother, Sylvester, were risking their lives for their country by serving in World War II, but they weren’t able to vote at home.
This was one of the primary motivations for Rosa to get involved with the Montgomery NAACP, and she wanted to not only help others to register to vote, but she also wanted to register herself.
Rosa joined the Montgomery NAACP in December 1943 and was elected as Secretary, and at that time, only 31 out of several thousand of the city’s Black residents were registered to vote.
Rosa, herself, tried to register three times between 1943 and 1945. She was completely refused the first time, and during her second attempt, Rosa was subjected to one of the impossible Literacy Tests.
Finally, on her third try in 1945, convinced that she had answered the questions correctly, Rosa copied down her questions and answers to have on hand, for future legal challenges, and the Registrar saw her do that and reluctantly approved her application.
Like others, in addition to passing the test, Rosa had to pay $1.50 for each year she was eligible to vote. The poll tax was $18.00 in total, which is equivalent to about $307 today. Rosa cast her first vote for James Folsom for Governor of Alabama, and continued to help others register to vote through the local NAACP Youth Council’s voter education programs.
ROSA PARKS'S 1956 POLL TAX RECEIPT
It was an extremely rare accomplishment. Though Rosa’s husband, Raymond, had worked to fundraise to help people pay those poll taxes, he, himself, wouldn’t be able to register to vote until he and Rosa moved to Detroit in the late 1950s.
FREEDOM SUMMER
Despite all of the obstacles, as we are wont to do, African-Americans persevered. Led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many other Civil Rights Movement Leaders, the African-American Community organized and peacefully marched to demand Voting Rights for both men and women.
In addition, for instance, to the Selma to Montgomery Marches in 1965 (CLICK HERE to Read my 2015 Black History Month Blog about them), a year earlier, The Freedom Summer Project was a 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi.
At that time, only 7% of African-Americans were registered to vote. Over 700 mostly White volunteers joined African-Americans in Mississippi to fight against voter intimidation and discrimination at the polls.
Freedom Summer volunteers were met with violent resistance from the KKK and members of law enforcement.
News coverage of beatings, false arrests, and even murder drew international attention to the Civil Rights Movement.
The increased awareness it brought to voter discrimination helped to further pressure President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Sadly, despite their efforts and sacrifices, voter registration in Mississippi was not greatly improved by the Freedom Summer. While 17,000 Black Mississippians attempted to register to vote that Summer, only 1,200 were successful.
THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965
As written earlier, President Lyndon Johnson signed The Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it created a significant change in the status of African-Americans throughout the South. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, watched, as President Johnson signed it.
The Voting Rights Act prohibited the States from using Literacy Tests and other methods of excluding African-Americans from voting. Prior to this, only an estimated 23% of voting-age Black people were registered nationally, but by 1969, the number had jumped to 61%.
2010 - 2023
In April 2010, Shelby County, Alabama filed suit asking a Federal Court in Washington, DC to declare Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.
Section 5 is a key part of the Voting Rights Act, requiring certain jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to submit any proposed changes in voting procedures to the U.S.
On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court swept away a key provision of this landmark civil rights law in Shelby County v. Holder, and since then, Voting Rights have continued to be chipped away, so that the phrase: ‘death by a thousand cuts’ comes to mind.
As I write this, there are recently approved or impending Voter Suppression laws in over half the country, and so many citizens and nonprofits are trying to fight them. It’s like playing Whack-a-Mole!
One voter suppression example is in my home State of Georgia. Following the 2020 Election, Senate Bill 202 (SB 202) was introduced. It is a 98-page Omnibus Bill also ironically known as “The Election Integrity Act of 2021.”
Some of the “lowlights” in it were/are:
- Reduced access to Absentee Ballots
- Shorter Runoff Election windows
- Allowance of random strangers being able to challenge your right to vote
- Prohibiting handing out water and snacks to voters who are subjected to hours’ long lines waiting to vote
Several voters and organizations have sued, and some small victories have recently been won, such as the water and snacks provisions ban being reversed.
PRESIDENT OBAMA DELIVERS JOHN LEWIS'S EULOGY
President Barack Obama delivered the Eulogy at Congressman John Lewis’s Funeral. In it, he said: “We no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here, there are those in power doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision.”
CURRENT LEGISLATION
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is a Bill that would modernize and revitalize the Voting Rights Act of 1965, strengthening legal protections against discriminatory voting policies and practices.
The Freedom to Vote Act would prevent voter suppression, gerrymandering, and election denial tactics.
Both Bills passed in The House of Representatives, when The Democrats held the majority. However, they did not pass in The Senate because of the 60-vote minimum requirement.
Now, they are just stuck in limbo. Someday, hopefully, they will be passed into laws.
2024 ELECTION
Every election is crucial, but never moreso than in 2024. It is not an exaggeration to say that US Democracy is hanging by a thread. I know that some people think that my commitment to trying to help preserve Democracy borders on obsessive. However, I'm not that bothered, and I won’t apologize for it.
When I see and hear what my forebears endured so that they could vote – so that I could vote – and when I see how hard some are trying to erase history, I feel compelled to enlighten anyone, who is willing to learn or be reminded of what is at stake.
If our votes were not so important, people wouldn’t have been trying to deny our right to vote for over a century.
I am inspired by Trae Young, Atlanta Hawks Point Guard, and I leave you with his reason for being committed to voting. CLICK HERE TO WATCH TRAE YOUNG.
Every Easter, when I eat a few jelly beans, I think about those brave men – and eventually, women – who suffered unthinkable indignities in their quests to vote. However, they never gave up.
So, neither can I. Neither can you. Neither can we.
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Sources: Google Images , History.com, Library of Congress, National Geographic, TIME, Brennan Center
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