Thread by @BenJealous

Hallelujah! Long time coming...
~120 yrs ago, my grt-grt grandfather tried to stop this law. He’d been one of the last black Reconstruction-era state legislators in VA.

Then Senator Glass refused literally citing the need to restore “white supremacy”. cnn.com/2021/03/16/pol…

~ 13 yrs ago, on behalf of @naacp, I asked then Gov. @timkaine to make such an executive order.

He refused.

I said he’d run as a “civil rights lawyer” and won w/ black votes.

He said he’d “promised the people of VA not use Constitutional powers in that way” and ended the call.

~12 yrs ago, Republican, @BobMcDonnell, became VA’s next governor.

I asked him to help @naacp overturn the ban & pass a law restoring voting rights for all former inmates.

He agreed. We tried for years. We fell short. Still, he made it easier to get your voting rights restored.

~8 yrs ago, a Democratic governor, @TerryMcAuliffe accelerated even further the simplified process @BobMcDonnell had started for restoring voting rights for formerly incarcerated people.

Still, he ultimately refused to do what @RalphNortham just did & issue the executive order.

The announcement that @GovernorVA @RalphNortham has restored the voting rights of every formerly incarcerated person in his state is a huge deal!

It’s a blow against an old Jim Crow law.

It helps tens of thousands of Virginians of very color reintegrate into our democracy.

And still....let’s be clear... Virginia’s lifetime ban on formerly incarcerated people was put in place as Sen. Glass said in 1902 to: “eliminate the darkey as a political factor” and ensure “complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”

Back then, my great great grandfather, Delegate Edward David Bland, took it personally. After all, he had been the type of political factor Senator Glass was talking about. Still his greater concern was for his people and his state. Jim Crowism is poison to democracy.

When @timkaine refused to do then what @RalphNortham did today, I had to call Del. Bland’s granddaughter (my grandma) and explain Tim’s decision. She had once trained a social worker named Barbara Mikulski. With women like that there’s no good way to explain cowardice to them.

My grandmother understood what her granddaddy did:

VA’s racist lifetime ban on voting by returned citizens has never just hurt blacks. It also hurts a lot of working class whites.

It just hurts MORE blacks so racists go with it.

That’s the not so hidden math of Jim Crowism.

What neither of us can understand (she’s 104 and sharp as a tack!) is why with Democrats controlling both houses and the governorship this racist voting ban still exists.

That’s when grandma starts quoting MLK.

Like MLK, she loathes moderates who know better and do nothing.

To my grandma leaders who lack courage aren’t leaders.

Her gold standard was her grandfather: Born into slavery Delegate Edward D. Bland helped lead a multiracial movement that built @VSU_1882 , expanded #VirginiaTech, and protected free public education for all children in VA.

On behalf on my grandmother Mamie Bland Todd, I plead with all Virginians:

Please accept the explicitly racist reasons your Jim Crow “ex-felon voting ban” was created, hear all your fellow Virginians of every color it has harmed, have courage, and overturn it once and for all!

Jim Crow voting laws should have no place in any democracy.

Any politician who supports them is a bigot.

Any politician who tolerates them is a coward.