Opinion

OP-ED: How to Win Elections Behind the Cotton Curtain

Published

11 years ago

November 12, 2015

We won the Voting Rights Act of 1965 at Selma, combining the power of a principled mass movement led by Dr. King and a compassionate president who did the right thing despite the heavy political price.

What was that cost? Well, President Johnson said it best at the time, when he told his aides that we’d “just lost the South for a generation.”

The civil rights movement made the moral move by marching across the bridge at Selma. LBJ did the right thing by signing the Voting Rights Act into law, knowing the price his party would pay.

The Jefferson Davis Democrats in the South did the wrong thing by responding to the “Southern strategy” of Richard Nixon and the racial dog whistles of Ronald Reagan. Due to race, the once-solid Democratic South switched over to become today’s solid Republican South.

Now it’s been half a century. Not just a generation, as LBJ foretold, but two-and-a-half generations — and still the Republican Party dominates below the Mason-Dixon Line.

As Rachel Maddow brought up in last week’s presidential forum, the Democratic Party in today’s South has been “hollowed out,” with only a handful of successful statewide Democratic candidates.

As long as that situation exists, the Democrats will be able to win the presidency, but what about the Senate and House?

The sad irony is that the South has benefited the most from the civil rights movement, whites and African-Americans together.

The tearing down of the “Cotton Curtain” by the civil rights martyrs and marchers meant that the South could join our modern economy. Population jumped.

The South could finally have professional sports teams. The civil rights movement forced the development of integrated football teams at Southern colleges that now dominate the sport.

The Olympics could be held in Atlanta in 1996, with Muhammad Ali and Stevie Wonder at the closing ceremonies. Toyota and Mercedes Benz could locate plants in the South, providing better jobs than cotton ever had.

Yet Southern politicians, stuck in the politics of fear, still poke at racial wounds for short-term success.

In order to starve the government, Southern politicians still refuse to invest in infrastructure across the region. Rebuilding our ports and harbors, investing in jobs programs that would employ white and African-American workers, preparing our coasts to survive the future Katrina-like storms that climate change will bring, accepting the Medicaid expansion that would provide needed health care for so many families — these public policy initiatives would develop the region even more, and open up the futures for so many young Southerners.

Yet too many politicians and voters continue to choose race over reason. White working-class Southern voters continue to run from race, choosing the party that backs both tax cuts and job cuts.

This is a political odd couple that makes no sense. Half a century after the Voting Rights Act, too many Southern voters are still afraid of change, even when it would benefit them.

How do we break through?

First of all, former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean was right — we need a 50-state strategy. We need to compete everywhere in the country, from the local level to the state level to the presidency.

The Democratic Party in the South needs to rebuild, to move from the outhouse to the courthouse to the statehouse to the White House.

Second, candidate Barack Obama showed us how we win in the South — with a message of hope and change, combined with a massive voter registration effort and a huge voter turnout.

In 2008, that combination carried Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. In 2012, Florida and Virginia again went blue, with North Carolina barely missing out.

Third, we need to battle voter suppression. Sen. Bernie Sanders was right when he pointed out that too many Republican leaders are “cowards” for repressing the African-American vote. Bernie also mentioned universal voter registration during.

Rachel Maddow’s forum, and right afterwards, in an interview with Chris Matthews, he raised an idea that I have been pushing for — a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote to every American. And we must protect and restore the power of the Voting Rights Act.

Fourth, we need to invest bottom-up in the South, economically and politically. If we raise wages, provide health care for everyone and open up voter registration to all our people, hope will rise, the South will develop, and people’s lives will be better.

If white working-class families choose hope over fear, their lives will improve — and so will those of Southern Latinos and African-Americans. And Democrats will be able to win elections again.

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.