[Here's a nice vignette about life in the American South by Lucian K. Truscott IV in the current NY Press.]
Do you think there's a soul in the CBS, or NBC, or ABC, or CNN "election headquarters" who knows about Magee, MS, and the way elections are run there? My wife Carolyn is from Magee, deep down in rural Simpson County, located halfway between Hattiesburg and the state capital Jackson to the north. Fourteen years ago, Carolyn and I went to Mendenhall, the county seat, to get our marriage license. We walked into the County Clerk's office, where marriage licenses were still accounted for in large ledgers marked "White" and "Colored."
The system of voting in Simpson County is run in a similar fashion. The last time Carolyn was back in Magee, there was a local election going on, and she and her mother went down to the local polling place to see how things were going. The polling place was in the police station. There was a voter registration table marked "Democrat" on the left and "Republican" on the right, where voters signed their names in the "Democrat" or "Republican" voting register. After signing the book, voters went to voting booths on the "Democrat" side of the room or the "Republican" side. The Simpson County sheriff was standing in the polling place, inside the local police station, observing each voter as he or she walked in and signed the books and voted.
You can imagine the effect voting in such circumstances might have on African-American voters, not to mention on Democrats in general, as the Republican sheriff oversaw their votes. In states like Mississippi, in counties like Simpson, the system works like this. The streetlight in front of your house goes out, or a gaping pothole opens up on the street next to your driveway. You pick up the phone and call the local highway office or city services, and depending on which book you signed and which side of the room you went to vote, you might hear this: "Well, Luther, that's too bad about the streetlight and the pothole. Maybe you'd better think twice next time you vote for county supervisor. We might find it in the budget to do some fixin' on your block."
[end of excerpt]
Carl
_________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.