Let’s be clear on one major point about the recent Alabama Senate race. Plain and simple, Doug Jones owes his success to the black vote. Pundits and other talking heads rant on about several other issues in the election, at times minimizing the crucial element—black voters. Blacks voted at a higher than predicted rate, and 94% of them voted for Jones, while over two-thirds (68%) of whites voted for Roy Moore.
It was not white women, as 63% of them voted for Roy Moore, despite the strong and credible allegations of child sexual abuse. Without the black vote, we would have Senator Roy Moore.
Blacks in Alabama voted despite the stumbling blocks put in their way—the unjustified voted id process and the closing of drivers’ license offices in cities with large black communities. And there was the closing of polling places.
Yet, blacks in Alabama voted. As I think about the voting results in Alabama, I can hear in my mind words from the old hymn, “Through many dangers, toils, and snares.” I can also hear the words of Evelyn Turner saying “I’ll vote on.”
In the 1980’s Turner and her husband Albert, a Martin Luther King aide, were two of the Marion Three that then U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions falsely accused of voter fraud for assisting blacks in completing absentee ballots in Perry County.
The Turners’ house was firebombed, leaving nothing but the foundation. When asked what she was going to do in the face of all these attacks on her family and their work, Evelyn Turner bravely responded, “I’ll vote on.”