Voting for the midterm elections gets underway on Tuesday across the United States. In the deep south state of Georgia, with its bitter past of racial segregation, African Americans hope that for the first time ever a black woman will fill the position of governor. RFI met with grassroots groups making the final push to get black voices heard.
In the 1950s and 60s, African Americans - sometimes barely literate - were subjected to a "literacy test" to be allowed to cast their ballot.
"Write right to the left from the right as you see it spelled here." "Spell backwards, forwards". "Draw a line around a number or letter in this sentence" are just a few examples of the 50 mindboggling tasks.
If there was one single mistake, they would not be allowed to vote anymore. Applicants would only have ten minutes to fulfill the task. It was the tool of the segregationist government of the state to prevent African Americans from influencing politics.
Jump forward to 2022. These tests do not exist anymore for the voters turning out for the midterm elections on Tuesday.
DeJuana Thompson is the founder of Woke Vote, an NGO helping people through the complex process of voter registration.
She thinks its a good idea to remind people how difficult voting was in the past and so has printed ten of the questions from the 1950s on forms for students to fill in.
"We remind people of the kinds of tactics that were used to suppress the vote back in 1964," she told RFI. "Many people were not able to finish these tests," she says.
Volunteers hand out the forms to curious looking students who eagerly take the test, at a crowded "Get Out The Vote" (GOTV) event organised at the campus of Morehouse College in Atlanta ... to discover that they, too, would not have been allowed to vote, had the requirement of a "literacy test" been in place today.
Filling in the registration to become a voter is still tricky today. A forgotten hyphen or accent may lead to disqualification. "My daughter has three apostrophes in her name," says Fenika Miller, deputy national field director with the Black Voters Matter Fund.
"And so if you don't register exactly as it is on your birth certificate, that could also be a barrier."
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© {{ scope.credits }}There's some optimism. "We have made some great strides," says Miller, since the dark times of segregation. "Not just political strides, but also just social justice strides."
"But we also know that we still have a very, very long way to go," she says pointing to "state sanctioned violence against George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Amaud Abery," in reference to African Americans who were killed by US law enforcement officers.
Still, society overall seems to be gradually changing. A massive rock carving, depicting proponents of slavery revered by the segregationists in Georgia has recently triggered massive criticism.
The enormous monument, carved into a monotlith in Stone Mountain Park just outside Atlanta, features Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and General Jefferson Davis.
But it is simply too large to face the fate of smaller statues depicting Lee and his co-slaveowners, which have been now removed in some cities.
Other than names, visitors to the site get no explanation as to who the three men were and what they stood for.
The cheerful conductor of a cable car that sails past the monument merely refers to it as "the largest stone sculpture in the US after Mount Rushmore." The souvenir shop in the Stone Mountain Park lacks any reference to the era.
Caleb Cage, a Sophomore student at Morehouse College is not too bothered by it. "You never want to forget your history," he says. "Because if you forget your history, you'll be destined to repeat it.
While recognizing that it can be "hurtful and traumatising" for some to see, he sees the carving as "symbolic of the history. That where we come from" but adds that "we need to recognize that and learn from it so we can move on."
"One way to move on is to recognize history as it was, including all its horrors. Which may mean a re-write of history text books used in schools.
"And that's the reason why we are voting," says Cage. "So that we can elect people that will do things to change the way we are taught in our school, what our children are taught. Because it's important for our children to learn the totality of our history and not learn it from a one sided way or learn it from a coloured lens - a rose-coloured lens," he says.
