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Alabama vote opens old racial wounds
School segregation remains a state law as amendment is defeated
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
The Washington Post
Updated: 9:22 p.m. ET Nov. 27, 2004
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - On that long-ago day of Alabama's great shame, Gov.
George C. Wallace (D) stood in a schoolhouse door and declared that
his state's constitution forbade black students to enroll at the
University of Alabama.
He was correct.
If Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963
moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct.
Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to approve a
constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring
separate schools for "white and colored children" and to eliminate
references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.
The vote was so close -- a margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million
-- that an automatic recount will take place Monday. But, with few
expecting the results to change, the amendment's saga has dragged
Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past that
illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present.
The outcome resonates achingly here in this college town, where the
silver-haired men and women who close their eyes and lift their arms
when the organ wails at Bethel Baptist Church -- a short drive from
Wallace's schoolhouse door -- don't have to strain to remember riding
buses past the shiny all-white school on their way to the all-black
school.
"There are people here who are still fighting the Civil War," said
Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel and a retired school
administrator. "They're holding on to things that are long since past.
It's almost like a religion."
Tax fears?
There are competing theories about the defeat of Amendment 2, the
measure that would have taken "colored children" and segregated
schools out of Alabama's constitution. One says latent, persistent
racism was to blame; another says voters are suspicious of all
constitutional amendments; and a third says it was not about race but
about taxes.
The amendment had two main parts: the removal of the separate-schools
language and the removal of a passage -- inserted in the 1950s in an
attempt to counter the Brown v. Board of Education ruling against
segregated public schools -- that said Alabama's constitution does not
guarantee a right to a public education. Leading opponents, such as
Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles, said they did not
object to removing the passage about separate schools for "white and
colored children." But, employing an argument that was ridiculed by
most of the state's newspapers and by legions of legal experts, Giles
and others said guaranteeing a right to a public education would have
opened a door for "rogue" federal judges to order the state to raise
taxes to pay for improvements in its public school system.
The argument plays to Alabama's primal fear of federal control, a fear
born of years of resentment over U.S. courts' ordering the
desegregation of schools and the creation of black-majority
legislative districts.
"Activists on the bench know no bounds," Giles said. "It's a trial
lawyer's dream."
Giles was aided by a virtually unparalleled Alabama celebrity in his
battle against the amendment, distributing testimonials from former
chief justice Roy Moore, whose fame was sealed in 2003 when he defied
a federal court order to remove a two-ton granite Ten Commandments
monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court. They were
joined by former Moore aide Tom Parker, who handed out miniature
Confederate flags this fall during his successful campaign for a seat
on the Alabama Supreme Court.
Arguing that the amendment could lead to higher taxes is a potent
strategy in Alabama, which is one of the nation's most lightly taxed
states and which resoundingly rejected a record $1.2 billion tax
increase proposed last year by Gov. Bob Riley (R), a conservative, to
pay for school improvements and lessen the tax burden on the poor. But
many blacks view the Amendment 2 opponents' tax pitch as a smoke
screen.
Education concerns
As the vote results sink in, the deacons and the Bible-toting ladies
at the Bethel church here have spoken of dark conspiracies, of
sinister agendas. They speak from experience.
Vertia Killings, 72, was riding on a bus that had to be rerouted
because of the commotion at the University of Alabama on the day
Wallace -- who eventually renounced his segregationist past -- made
his stand. Her father, Benny Mack, paid a $45 poll tax and "ate a
little less" because of it, she said. Others chose to eat instead of
vote.
Killings does not see the amendment's defeat as a matter of mere
symbolism, even though Alabama's constitutional ban on integrated
schools was trumped -- then and now -- by federal law. She has watched
school testing results with growing uneasiness.
Black students in Alabama have struggled on some national tests, with
73 percent of black eighth-graders rated below basic competency in
math, compared with 32 percent of white eighth-graders. Killings also
frets about Alabama schools -- just as schools in many other parts of
the country -- steadfastly resegregating. This phenomenon, which is
getting increased attention among national education experts, is
attributed to a kaleidoscope of factors, including the suburban
migration of white families, private school expansion and the rising
popularity of home schooling among white conservatives.
"It seems like we're having a reversal," Killings said.
It matters not at all to Killings and her friends that the amendment's
opponents say they want to remove the segregated-schools portion of
the constitution but cannot abide by guaranteeing a public education
and fear mandates for higher education taxes. The people who are most
affected by poorly funded schools are the same people who were
affected in another era by poll taxes: poor blacks and poor whites.
"I don't know but a few black folks who can afford to send their kids
to private school," said Charles Steele Jr., a former Democratic
member of the Alabama legislature who lives here and is national vice
president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
'Loony laws'
This is not the first time that Steele has tangled with Alabama's
constitution, a gigantic document that has more than 740 amendments
and more than 310,000 words, making it the world's longest, at nearly
40 times the length of the U.S. Constitution. Four years ago, voters
repealed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage.
The state constitution, which most historians agree was written to
protect large landowners and to disenfranchise blacks, is so riddled
with antiquated wording that some high school students in Birmingham
make an annual trip to the city library for a project known as the
search for "the loony laws."
Yet the constitution, with its racist past and its racist present,
only grows. On Nov. 2, it was amended three times -- numbers 743, 744
and 745.
Giles has said he would support taking out the passage about separate
schools for "white and colored children" as long as the part about not
guaranteeing a right to an education is kept.
Ken Guin, the Democratic House majority leader who wrote Amendment 2,
is talking about trying again. Next time, he said, he might do it
Giles's way.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
), I get a little pissed off, to say the least.
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