By: Daniel Nardini
On November 6th, the people of Alabama will be asked to amend the state constitution. They will be asked to keep or drop amendment 4 of the Alabama Constitution. Amendment 4 allows for segregation in all public places. This amendment is a leftover from days of the Jim Crow laws that allowed segregation of non-Hispanic whites from African Americans and other races. This law has been on the books even though the Civil Rights movement helped to get this law struck down in the U.S. Supreme Court 50 years ago. This statute is still on the books, and many people in Alabama want to see this statute struck down. They will get this chance on November 6th, during election day. Yet there are a lot of people, including African Americans, who do not want to see this amendment struck down. They wish to keep the amendment, even though there is no way that segregation can be enforced, and this part of the state constitution is long since dead.
The big question that comes to mind is why does anyone, especially African Americans, want to keep an amendment that was part of their brutal discriminatory treatment? The answer lies in part of the amendment. The amendment also states that all in the state should have a free public education paid for by residents’ taxes. The new amendment would remove this from the constitution, and thus public schools, especially for African Americans and Latinos, would no longer receive state funding. This dirty political strategem was put into the state constitution originally to make the amendment pass back in the days of segregation. This made the amendment more acceptable to whites who wanted to put African Americans in an inferior position, yet provide a better education for whites only. But this amendment over the past 50 years ironically has helped all residents, including African Americans and Latinos, receive a free and equal education under the law. The largely Republican state legislature now wants to remove this, and with it equality in education.
Because of this, many people want to keep this infamous amendment simply to preserve the equality in education for all in Alabama. In 2004, the people were given the same choice, and they voted to keep the amendment for this reason. As one of the teachers in the state stated, the keeping of this amendment would be a “black eye,” but it would protect those children from losing what education they get. If this amendment were dropped, then public funding of schools with large numbers of African Americans and Latinos would receive nothing. White schools would largely be unaffected. The politicians could not be giving the people a more despicable choice. The people of the state may be stuck with a piece of their own infamous history for that much longer.
The Alabama Constitutional Crisis
By: Daniel Nardini
The big question that comes to mind is why does anyone, especially African Americans, want to keep an amendment that was part of their brutal discriminatory treatment? The answer lies in part of the amendment. The amendment also states that all in the state should have a free public education paid for by residents’ taxes. The new amendment would remove this from the constitution, and thus public schools, especially for African Americans and Latinos, would no longer receive state funding. This dirty political strategem was put into the state constitution originally to make the amendment pass back in the days of segregation. This made the amendment more acceptable to whites who wanted to put African Americans in an inferior position, yet provide a better education for whites only. But this amendment over the past 50 years ironically has helped all residents, including African Americans and Latinos, receive a free and equal education under the law. The largely Republican state legislature now wants to remove this, and with it equality in education.
Because of this, many people want to keep this infamous amendment simply to preserve the equality in education for all in Alabama. In 2004, the people were given the same choice, and they voted to keep the amendment for this reason. As one of the teachers in the state stated, the keeping of this amendment would be a “black eye,” but it would protect those children from losing what education they get. If this amendment were dropped, then public funding of schools with large numbers of African Americans and Latinos would receive nothing. White schools would largely be unaffected. The politicians could not be giving the people a more despicable choice. The people of the state may be stuck with a piece of their own infamous history for that much longer.