When I was in my teens, my family relocated to Daytona Beach, Florida. After a decade of vacationing there, my parents uprooted their lives (and mine) to chase the allure of the good life in the Sunshine State.
This allure lasted just under three years; for me, just about two. By June of 1966, we were all back home ready to resume our lives.
Having come from the northeast with its hustle and bustle life style, Florida seemed an oasis of a more gentile life. Where all to often people we dealt with in Rhode Island would almost inaudibly utter an unwelcoming grunt, it seemed all Floridians were more open and unfailingly polite.
That’s if you were white. Daytona Beach was comprised of two parts divided by the Halifax River - the peninsula where the tourists went for the actual beach and where we lived, and the mainland where the bulk of non-tourist businesses were and where the African-American population resided.
The tourism business relied on the involvement of the black community - as domestics, hotel housekeepers, landscapers, kitchen help at the hotels and restaurants located throughout the peninsula.
It was only after we relocated that we were made aware that pursuant to a town ordinance, all blacks had to be off the peninsula by dark. Failing that, they would face summary arrest, incarceration, and the next day the imposition of a fine to gain their release. If those arrested couldn’t immediately pay the fine, they served four or five days working for the town landscaping government grounds and cleaning government buildings.
There were three public high schools in Daytona, one on the peninsula and two on the mainland. Two of schools were for whites only and one school was for the black kids. The high school that I attended on the peninsula was for whites only. The other two were on the mainland.
I remember attending my first high school school assembly. It started with the Pledge of Allegiance and then the National Anthem. This was just like my experience in my old school until…they cranked up “Dixie.” Then instead of the sullen attention paid to the Pledge and the Anthem, it was almost pandemonium when they played Dixie - raucous singing and hand clapping, along with foot stomping serving to purge the drudgery of the daily high school grind.
This song was not sung with adolescent joy, a release from the tedium of our school day. Instead it was a song of defiance, a war cry against the assault from outside against their time honored culture and traditions. Sometimes it wasn’t easy being a “Yankee” transplant in the south.
And change was coming and all but the willfully ignorant knew it. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court, in Brown v. Topeka, handed down its decision that “separate but equal” facilities are inherently unequal and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The following year in a related case sometimes labeled as Brown II, the Court admonished the effected states that these separate facilities were to be integrated with all “deliberate speed.”
Fast forward to 1964 when the Department of Justice threatened action against local governments that hadn’t yet integrated to compel them to do so pursuant to a court order. Evidently the feds thought a decade of doing nothing to vindicate the rights of young people was just a tad too long. Silly feds.
Daytona was one of those decade long laggards, but when threatened with court action it came up with a school integration plan. The “plan” was to take six kids from the black high school and place five of them in the mainland white school and to place one in the school I attended. When one school department official was asked why only one, the response was that if the one kid made it through the year, they’d assign more kids in the next school year.
I am aware that social and political change, while a boon to some, is a direct assault on the power, pride, and privilege of those who benefit from the status quo. Change is a threat to the established order. And that the established order will fight, using any means necessary to maintain their place at the top of the social and economic pyramid.
Over the fifty-nine years that have passed from Brown to today, and we’ve seen pitched battles fought over civil rights, women’s rights, climate change, economic rights, health equity, educational opportunities, and culture writ large to name just a few issues. And in order to preserve the status quo for the select few, our courts and law in general has been weaponized to not only resist change but to punish those who work for such change.
Over the past fifty-nine years I have come to really appreciate just how little sustainable change has been achieved. I know that this sounds like a provocative statement and I’m ready to more fulsomely defend that some other day. For now let me offer the events in Tennessee on April 6.
On March 27, a person walked into a private school with an AR-15 and fired 156 rounds killing six people. Three of those killed were little kids, two age 9 and one age 8. The remaining three were the school’s principal, a maintenance worker, and a substitute teacher.
On March 30, students concerned about their safety as they attend school, went to the state’s legislature to protest that legislature’s inaction on gun safety. Understandably they were especially incensed that too many of their peers have been mowed down from the use of a modified weapon of war.
During the morning of the protest, when the legislature was in recess, three legislators openly supported the students’ activism, two using a bull horn to reportedly shout “power to the people!” One of those two legislators represented the district where the shooting took place.
As a result, the three legislators - one white woman and two black men - were subjected to expulsion proceedings. There is a lot of controversy over how these three legislators were treated and the lack of any discernible due process in these proceedings. All that matters is the outcome.
On April 6, the two men were expelled from the legislature, the one woman survived expulsion by one vote. When asked about this outcome, the Tennessee Speaker of the House opined that the survivor showed contrition while the others had failed to do so. Besides, she didn’t use the bullhorn.
Three legislators, joining with students to support gun reform measures in a state where any such measures are barely extant, were subject to humiliation at the hands of their peers for having had the temerity to stand with their constituents in support of efforts to save the lives of future kids who did nothing more than attend their schools.
In other words, these legislators did their jobs. And as a result doing their jobs, two of the members - the two black members - were expelled from office, thereby disenfranchising over 150,000 Tennesseans. And in so doing, the majority party in the legislature gave democracy a kick to the shins and a punch in the jaw for good measure.
The reasons we have arrived at this place at this time in our history are many and varied. And now we find ourselves at an inflection point where we either throw up our hands and stay silent or we roll up our sleeves and get busy.
The erosion of democratic principles and processes, once cloaked in the unseen corridors of power, supported by faux academic reasoning, and legitimized by faux constitutionally questionable court decisions has now taken on the confidence of allowing this anti-democratic agenda to be seen in the clear light of day.
Readers of this blog know that I have railed against the perversion of junk constitutional judgments supported by cherry-picked, often fabricated history as publicly understood in the late 18th century. The employment of this originalist analytical method is used not to determine the outcome of constitutional questions but to advance a predetermined agenda under the color of law.
Looking at this trend over the past fifteen years, we have seen possession of firearms elevated to a constitutional right. We have seen that right incorporated to the states, and just last year the the Court crippled New York’s ability to ensure even a minimum of gun regulations to ensure the public’s safety.
We have seen gerrymandered districts be permitted for political reasons in service to the aims of the governing political party controlling the drawing of district lines upon completion of the decennial census. A case of racially motivated gerrymandering in Alabama, cloaked as permissible political gerrymandering, will be decided before the end of the Court’s term. The smart money is on Alabama’s subterfuge being legitimized and validated.
We have seen the Court, using historical analysis that doesn’t rise to the level of “junk,” stripping away the right of half the population to determine their own healthcare. The Dobbs decision was straight out of Margaret Atwood’s worst dystopian nightmare. Now in an effort to further deprive women of any choice to decide their own healthcare, local state and federal district courts are attempting to ban medications that treat more than just one health issue.
And last week we witnessed what happens when elected officials try to legislate while black. There is no question that there were less extreme measures to deal with their “rules” violation. And there is no question that if the two state representatives were white they’d have been treated less severely.
Individually, the three legislators were subject to expulsion legislation, where the specific legislator had to answer questions and to explain why they shouldn’t be expelled from the legislature. The first to defend herself was the woman, Gloria Johnson, who argued that she had done nothing improper and detailed her plans to pursue gun reform legislation. A two-thirds majority vote was required for her expulsion. She avoided expulsion by one vote.
The second legislator, Justin Jones, was more confrontational, calling the expulsion action anti-democratic. He listed the history of expulsions from the Tennessee House (three) and gave examples of those who transgressed (e.g., urinating on an opponent‘s chair) House decorum who were not expelled from the legislature. When all was said and done, Justin Jones was expelled. Maybe he’d have survived expulsion if went and peed on the Speaker’s chair.
The third representative, Justin Pearson, was subjected to rigorous questioning from his colleagues. One colleague placed the blame for Pearson’s situation on Pearson, calling him an attention seeker. And then, with a voice dripping with condescension, said “you got it now.” His tone was such that he didn’t need to use the word “boy.” Pearson was expelled from the legislature.
On April 10, Justin Jones, was reinstated to his office on an interim basis. Later this week, Justin Pearson is expected to also be reinstated on an interim basis. Both will need to be elected in a special election if they want to serve the remainder of their original terms of office.
What happens after that is anyone’s guess, but the power dynamic hasn’t changed. Both Justin’s and the one woman - Gloria Johnson - have targets on their backs and an unscrupulous Speaker of the House has them in the crosshairs. Which seems apropos given that this challenge to the “dignity” of the legislature arose because three legislators championed the cause of kids who didn’t want to get gunned down in their classrooms.
To me this whole affair is emblematic of our times. This is the intersection of race and white authority within the shell of a democratic process hiding the reality of an authoritarian government. The saying “democracy dies in darkness” is inapplicable in this instance. Democracy in Tennessee was summarily executed in the bright light of day on a weekday afternoon.
As I took all this in, my mind went back to the Daytona Beach of my youth. I remember how I felt the first time “Dixie” was played at that high school assembly. Distinctly associated with the pre-Civil War south, what began as a folk song became an anthem and battle song that continues to this day.
Clearly the descendants of the old confederacy missed the lesson Lincoln tried to teach us. On the evening of April 9, 1865, hours after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, at a rally celebrating the war’s end, Lincoln asked the Army band to play Dixie. When the crowd protested and the band hesitated to honor his request, Lincoln said that the song should be played as a signal that it was time to begin the healing between the sections. The band played the song and the people, led by Lincoln’s reedy voice, reclaimed the song in its original folk form.
Less than a week later, Lincoln was assassinated by a southern sympathizer thus setting up some of the divisions that continue to this day.
There is an authoritarian movement, using fear of “the other” to gain political support. Over the past few years, we have seen “alternative facts” used to question what we‘ve seen with our own eyes. We’ve seen and heard “junk science” in the midst of the most serious public health challenge in memory.
We’ve seen the governor of a state systematically render public education devoid of certain topics necessary for a clear understanding of our history; ban books from school libraries; forbid the use of specific pronouns; attack one of the largest businesses in his state because that business dared to oppose that governor’s policies; and opposed the use of vaccines to avoid the spread of disease during the COVID pandemic, all in the name of “freedom.” And this governor has an ambition to be president if not in 2024, then in 2028.
We have been subjected to the “big lie” about the “big steal.” In the 2020 presidential election, the loser - the incumbent president - questioned the validity of the presidential election. He sought assistance of republicans throughout the country to “find votes” and to appoint alternative electors from battleground states with the intent of invalidating the results of what by all accounts was a free and fair election.
And this president, in a last attempt to retain power, incited an insurrection and then watched while the mob threatened public officials’ safety and lives while seeking to derail the orderly and peaceful transfer of power. And our politics is so warped that large numbers of people still do not see or accept his actions for what they were - a direct assault on our democracy.
This has emboldened local officials to enact laws and policies restricting the free flow of information, restrict the autonomy of specific groups of people, and summarily punish political opponents. And there are those among us who are more than willing to assist in the destruction of democracy as we know.
Call it what you will, fascism, authoritarianism, or dictatorship - we need not get bogged down on the semantics of a word - we are facing an existential threat to democracy. To paraphrase Lincoln, the greatest threat to our democracy will not be external, but rather will come from within.
What occurred in Tennessee is only one example of the exercise of authoritarian power. We need to see and understand it for what it is. And then do something to resist these discrete assaults on our country.
NOTE: As a post script to this piece, I write this on April 10. To that date, we have had 15 mass shootings since April 1. Maybe in this instance we should listen to the kids and enact real gun reforms beginning with the abolition of assault weapons from our communities.
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