#NNPA BlackPress
Voter Suppression a Lasting Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
NNPA NEWSWIRE — “In Federalist No. 54, James Madison wrote about the chief concern of the representation of slaves concerning taxation and representation,” said Maxim Thorne, an attorney and managing director of The Andrew Goodman Foundation. “This federalist paper states that slaves are property as well as people, therefore requiring some, but not full, representation. Ultimately a decision was made to count every three out of five slaves through the creation of the Three-Fifths Compromise,” he said.
(Read the entire series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11)
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia
“Presidential elections and the voter experience have long been fraught for black people. From racist poll taxes to made-up literacy tests to the egregious rollback of voting rights over the past 50 years, American democracy has, at times, felt like a weird and failed social experiment.” — Patrisse Cullors
“Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right. … It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of states’ rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.” — President Lyndon B. Johnson, from ‘The Voting Rights Act Address’
New U.S. Census data projects that in in 2045 the United States will be “minority white,” and with several factors considered, The Progressive succinctly noted the implications: In thirty years, more potential voters will be non-white.
Donald Trump continues to prime audiences with his racial fear-mongering and rhetoric of white nationalism and, nationwide, Republicans have gone out of their way to prevent non-white people from voting, as also noted in The Progressive.
According to the Pew Research Center fewer than 3 percent of black people are registered as Republican and fewer than 15 percent of Latinos register Republican.
Voter suppression, it’s totally clear, is about racial politics more than party politics.
It’s also clear that voter suppression is one of the many lingering and lasting effects of the 500-year-old Transatlantic Slave Trade.
“The whole idea of the slave trade was the disenfranchisement of our human rights,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in an interview with NNPA Newswire at the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s recent Rainbow Push Coalition Wall Street Project.
“Voter suppression is the disenfranchisement of our human and civil rights and that’s why our struggle must have continuity because we’re still fighting for justice and equality,” Sharpton said.
Jackson agreed.
“Clearly, disenfranchisement has been the theme from the time they brought our people over here on slave ships from Africa,” Jackson said.
“What you see with voter suppression and disenfranchisement is a product of the slave trade for sure,” he said.
During the 2018 midterm elections, voter participation was more than 10 percentage points higher than it was in the 2014 midterm elections, demonstrating Americans’ demand for change and increased enthusiasm for exercising their civic duty to vote.
That said, nearly 120 million eligible Americans did not participate in the November elections, according to a report from the Center for American Progress.
The report noted that widespread voter suppression – particularly against historically marginalized groups – is a reoccurring problem in the United States.
Each election cycle, untold numbers of eligible Americans are prevented from voting due to barriers in the voter registration process, restrictions on casting ballots, and discriminatory and partisan-rigged district maps.
The report described some of the voter suppression measures and other Election Day problems that potentially kept millions of eligible Americans from participating in the 2018 midterm elections.
Those included:
- Voter registration problems
- Voter purges
- Strict voter ID and ballot requirements
- Voter confusion
- Voter intimidation and harassment
- Poll closures and long lines
- Malfunctioning voting equipment
- Disenfranchisement of justice-involved individuals
- Gerrymandering
Many, like Sharpton and Jackson, said the actions of voter suppression and disenfranchisement are remnants of the transatlantic slave trade.
“Africans came here with nothing and with no rights to anything, not even their children. They had to learn an entirely new language,” said Janice Robinson-Celeste, a former nanny, early childhood specialist and one-time daycare owner who publishes SuccessfulBlackParenting.com.
“Today, too many red states have manipulated the system by redistricting voting areas, suppressing votes, using malfunctioning machines which create long lines and deter people, to requiring identification to vote,” Robinson-Celeste said.
“We owe it to our ancestors — from slavery to the Civil Rights era — to vote in every election. The GOP wants to strip our rights away which is reminiscent of what the slave traders did when our people were kidnapped from Africa and at the least to the pre-civil rights movement. We have to fight for our rights, or we will gradually lose them in a slow boil,” she said.
Finally, Robinson-Celeste added:
“It doesn’t matter what candidate you like or don’t like at this point. It matters which will do the best for your children, for you and your family. That’s the one you vote for. The idea is to keep the worst one out of office.”
“From the birthing pains of American Democracy came the racist deformity that remains a part of us today,” said Maxim Thorne, an attorney and managing director of The Andrew Goodman Foundation, which supports youth leadership development, voting accessibility, and social justice initiatives on campuses across the country with mini-grants to select institutions of higher learning and other financial assistance to students.
“This is despite centuries of legal and legislative efforts to repair that core infection of the three-fifths clause that is embedded in the U.S. Constitution,” Thorne said.
In Federalist No. 54, James Madison wrote about the chief concern of the representation of slaves concerning taxation and representation, Thorne said.
“This federalist paper states that slaves are property as well as people, therefore requiring some, but not full, representation. Ultimately a decision was made to count every three out of five slaves through the creation of the Three-Fifths Compromise,” he said.
What’s more, white people, the economic and cultural beneficiaries of the plantocracy, have for centuries tried to maintain that same power structure, Thorne said.
“For many, especially in the American South, this notion has become a sought-after norm. Embedded deep in our racist culture, white citizens continue to undermine the African-American vote and that of other marginalized racial groups today,” he said.
All of that could be seen in the 2018 Midterm Election through the rebirth and escalation of voter suppression tactics throughout the country, Thorne further contends.
He said since 2013 when the United States Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many attempts have been made to recreate Jim Crow-era policies meant to disenfranchise minority voters.
“That’s why we see a resurgence of voter ID laws, purging of voter rolls, as well as threats and intimidation,” Thorne said.
“This paradigm was never more glaring than in the 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial Race. Stacey Abrams, the first Black woman to be nominated for governor in the United States, had been surfacing as a viable candidate for the position since 2013,” he said.
Thorne continued:
“Like Obama, she electrified the African-American and progressive communities. It became clear however that the voting structure was rigged against her.
“The Georgia Secretary of State, Briana Kemp, who oversaw voting in the state, refused to step down from his position while running as her opponent.
“Mr. Kemp attempted to close polling stations in majority Black precincts. Malfunctioning voting machines in largely Black counties affected voting. Voters complained to the Georgia NAACP that the voting machines registered a vote for Kemp even when they selected Abrams.
“Fifty-three thousand voter registration applications were never processed, from predominantly Black districts, greater than the margin by which Stacey Abrams lost the election. Ultimately, Abrams conceded in a race that was sullied by suppression.”
Those nefarious and racist voter suppression activities fulfill the spirit of the three-fifths clause, Thorne said.
“The nation appears to have moved on from the Georgia election with many of the structural problems remaining intact and I expect there will be loud rumblings of unfairness in 2020 again but vested interests are only thinking in partisan patterns, not about real inclusive democracy,” he said.
“This unquestioned acceptance of the denial of African-American voting rights is the current festering of the racist seed of our founding.”
#NNPA BlackPress
Trump Set to Sign Largest Cut to Medicaid After a Marathon Protest Speech by Leader Jeffries
BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The bill also represents the biggest cut in Medicare in history and is a threat to the health care coverage of over 15 million people. The spending in Trump’s signature legislation also opens the door to a second era of over-incarceration in the U.S.

By Lauren Burke
By a vote of 218 to 214, the GOP-controlled U.S. House passed President Trump’s massive budget and spending bill that will add $3.5 trillion to the national debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The bill also represents the biggest cut in Medicare in history and is a threat to the health care coverage of over 15 million people. The spending in Trump’s signature legislation also opens the door to a second era of over-incarceration in the U.S. With $175 billion allocated in spending for immigration enforcement, the money for more police officers eclipsed the 2026 budget for the U.S. Marines, which is $57 billion. Almost all of the policy focus from the Trump Administration has focused on deporting immigrants of color from Mexico and Haiti.
The vote occurred as members were pressed to complete their work before the arbitrary deadline of the July 4 holiday set by President Trump. It also occurred after Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries took the House floor for over 8 hours in protest. Leader Jeffries broke the record in the U.S. House for the longest floor speech in history on the House floor. The Senate passed the bill days before and was tied at 50-50, with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski saying that, “my hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.” There were no changes made to the Senate bill by the House. A series of overnight phone calls to Republicans voting against, not changes, was what won over enough Republicans to pass the legislation, even though it adds trillions to the debt. The Trump spending bill also cuts money to Pell grants.
“The Big Ugly Bill steals food out of the hands of starving children, steals medicine from the cabinets of cancer patients, and equips ICE with more funding and more weapons of war than the United States Marine Corps. Is there any question of who those agents will be going to war for, or who they will be going to war against? Beyond these sadistic provisions, Republicans just voted nearly unanimously to close urban and rural hospitals, cripple the child tax credit, and to top it all off, add $3.3 trillion to the ticking time bomb that is the federal deficit – all from a party that embarrassingly pretends to stand for fiscal responsibility and lowering costs,” wrote Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY) in a statement on July 3.
“The Congressional Budget Office predicts that 17 million people will lose their health insurance, including over 322,000 Virginians. It will make college less affordable. Three million people will lose access to food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). And up to 16 million students could lose access to free school meals. The Republican bill does all of this to fund tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations,” wrote Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) in a statement. The bill’s passage has prompted Democrats to start thinking about 2026 and the next election cycle. With the margins of victory in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate being so narrow, many are convinced that the balance of power and the question of millions being able to enjoy health care come down to only several thousand votes in congressional elections. But currently, Republicans controlled by the MAGA movement control all three branches of government. That reality was never made more stark and more clear than the last seven days of activity in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.

#NNPA BlackPress
Congressional Black Caucus Challenges Target on Diversity
BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — we found that the explanations offered by the leadership of the Target Corporation fell woefully short of what our communities deserve and of the values of inclusion that Target once touted

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
Target is grappling with worsening financial and reputational fallout as the national selective buying and public education program launched by the Black Press of America and other national and local leaders continues to erode the retailer’s sales and foot traffic. But a recent meeting that the retailer intended to keep quiet between CEO Brian Cornell and members of the Congressional Black Caucus Diversity Task Force was publicly reported after the Black Press discovered the session, and the CBC later put Target on blast.
“The Congressional Black Caucus met with the leadership of the Target Corporation on Capitol Hill to directly address deep concerns about the impact of the company’s unconscionable decision to end a number of its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts,” CBC Chair Yvette Clarke stated. “Like many of the coalition leaders and partner organizations that have chosen to boycott their stores across the country, we found that the explanations offered by the leadership of the Target Corporation fell woefully short of what our communities deserve and of the values of inclusion that Target once touted,” Congresswoman emphasized. “Black consumers contribute overwhelmingly to our economy and the Target Corporation’s bottom line. Our communities deserve to shop at businesses that publicly share our values without sacrificing our dignity. It is no longer acceptable to deliver promises to our communities in private without also demonstrating those values publicly.”
Lauren Burke, Capitol Hill correspondent for Black Press of America, was present when Target CEO Cornell and a contingent of Target officials arrived at the U.S. Capitol last month. “It’s always helpful to have meetings like this and get some candid feedback and continue to evolve our thinking,” Cornell told Burke as he exited the meeting. And walked down a long hallway in the Cannon House Office Building. “We look forward to follow-up conversations,” he stated. When asked if the issue of the ongoing boycott was discussed, Cornell’s response was, “That was not a big area of focus — we’re focused on running a great business each and every day. Take care of our teams. Take care of the guests who shop with us and do the right things in our communities.”
A national public education campaign on Target, spearheaded by Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), the NNPA’s board of directors, and with other national African American leaders, has combined consumer education efforts with a call for selective buying. The NNPA is a trade association that represents the more than 220 African American-owned newspapers and media companies known as the Black Press of America, the voice of 50 million African Americans across the nation. The coalition has requested that Target restore and expand its stated commitment to do business with local community-owned businesses inclusive of the Black Press of America, and to significantly increase investment in Black-owned businesses and media, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU, Black-owned Banks, national Black Church denominations, and grassroots and local organizations committed to improving the quality of life of all Americans, and especially those from underserved communities. According to Target’s latest earnings report, net sales for the first quarter of 2025 fell 2.8 percent to $23.85 billion compared to the same period last year. Comparable store sales dropped 3.8 percent, and in-store foot traffic slid 5.7 percent.
Shares of Target have also struggled under the pressure. The company’s stock traded around $103.85 early Wednesday afternoon, down significantly from roughly $145 before the controversy escalated. Analysts note that Target has lost more than $12 billion in market value since the beginning of the year. “We will continue to inform and to mobilize Black consumers in every state in the United States,” Chavis said. “Target today has a profound opportunity to respond with respect and restorative commitment.”
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