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Voting Rights as a Key Political Determinant of Health, Then and Now
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Journal Article
Voting Rights as a Key Political Determinant of Health, Then and Now
2024
Overview
In fall 1959, Black tenant farmers In Fayette County, Tennessee, were evicted from their homes and the land they worked because they had gone to the county courthouse to register to vote. Refusing to be chased away, the group erected a \"freedom tent city\" on donated land while seeking redress from the federal government. Local White people retaliated by refusing to sell them food, medicine, or basic supplies and trying to kill one of their leaders, John McFerrin, by running him over with a truck. They persisted In their efforts, living in floorless tents, \"surrounded by Inches of mud and mire\" according to civil rights activist Ella Baker, who visited them in 1961,1 The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), the Congress on Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and labor unions, meanwhile, raised funds to provide for the tent city residents' needs. For young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizers such asjohn Lewis, who became involved in this support campaign, the Fayette tent city brought home the reality that Southern Black Americans' fight for voting rights was above all a struggle fortheir collective survival.1 in March 1965, Lewis and other Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leaders went on to organize the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, that culminated in the nationally televised \"Bloody Sunday\" attack by club-wielding state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and spurred passage ofthe federal Voting Rights Act (VRA)2In the decades since the VRA's passage, the understanding ofthe civil rights movement as fundamentally a fight for better and healthier Black ilves has receded from popular memory in favor of revisionist narratives that cast it as a campaign for equal rights under the law.3 The article by Rushovich et al. in the current issue oJ/JPH (p. 300) brings forth new evidence to highlight the historical importance of civil rights legislation as an effective mechanism for Black Americans to secure access to the basic conditions necessary for supporting life and health. in their main analysis, the authors compare infant death rates in two groups of US counties-those where the VRA's provisions were implemented and those where they were not-for the period immediately before the passage ofthe VRA (from 1959 to 1965) and the period immediately after its implementation (1966-1970). Controlling for population size and other county characteristics, including health systems, they found that the Black (but not White) infant death rates decreased 17.3% more in the VRAexposed counties (those where the federal government intervened to remove racist voter suppression policies) than in non-VRA-exposed counties during the period of analysis.Because ofthe recent weakening of the VRA, these findings hold renewed relevance. The editorials in this issue by Pomeranz (p. 294), Rhodes (p. 291 ), and Hing (p. 297) discuss the implications of the article by Rushovich et al. in light of the US Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v Holder, which invalidated the VRA's preclearance provision-a requirement that the federal government approve all proposed changes to voting policies in states and counties where systematic voter disenfranchisement has occurred. As Hing notes, the end of preclearance opened the way for a slew of new restrictions on voting: she cites the fact that 29 states, including 11 where any changes to voting laws would have required federal preclearance, have in the years since Shelby v Holder passed 94 restrictive voting laws. Among these, felony disenfranchisement laws and voter identification laws \"disproportionately disenfranchise voters racialized as Black.\" Pomeranz additionally calls attention to state practices that have made voting more difficult, such as Georgia's decision to close 10% of its voting locations in the decade since Shelby v Holder, despite experiencing increased voter registration, and the resulting hours-long wait times in predominantly non-White communities.
