Voting

"I focused on images of voters, of all political beliefs, queuing up in circumstances as varied as rain in Georgia, cold in Montana and heat in Arizona. Older people with their walkers standing patiently for hours. Indigenous Americans on horseback riding 10 miles to vote. Parents, their kids on their shoulders. Lines stretching for blocks, nearly as long as the lines of cars at food pantries a few months ago. The vertical shapes of Americans standing in wait to vote one after another, in their masks and, for the most part, socially distanced. An estimated 100 million voters cast their votes early, with rounds of applause often greeting first-time voters." -- Nell Irvin Painter, November 5, 2020.

 

"The First Vote," Harper's Weekly, 1867

Nell Irvin Painter's op-ed in today's New York Times, "It Shouldn’t Be This Close. But There’s Good News, Too" described her feelings about Tuesday's election. Despite all the depressing news, she saw "An upwelling of faith in the epitome of citizenship, voting." Painter also talked about other countries and other times where voting represented citizens' faith in democracy. She linked to the above image of the first vote cast by Blacks in the South after the Civil War, an example of American voting history. She wrote:

"The American historian in me can reach farther back to envision determined voting, to Reconstruction, to the image on the cover of Harper’s Weekly of November 1867, with A. R. Waud’s illustrationof Black men lined up to deposit ballots into partisan urns.

"At the front of the line stands an old graybeard in ragged clothing, workingmen’s tools in his pocket. He is dark-skinned, evidently formerly enslaved. Behind him stands a light-skinned dandy in curls and cravat, and behind him, a decorated Union soldier. These three lead a line of voters of varied classes and darkness of skin."

I found Painter's op-ed to be a very comforting antidote to the pessimism and sadness I felt for the result of the election. There's still no clear winner, but the strong prospect of a Biden presidency with a completely nullifying Senate, where there will be no cooperation and no confirmation of an effective cabinet and executive branch of government, is horrifying. Fortunately it's less horrifying than four more years of the current executive. And Painter's words express hope for the more distant future, perhaps.

I'm grateful for Painter's attempt at optimism. Her book The History of White People taught me much about the history of racism and white supremacy (I reviewed it here).  The book I read this week, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson (reviewed yesterday) relates very much to this work, and when I looked up the author, I learned that Painter was Johnson's thesis advisor for his PhD. I hope to read more works by both authors.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander, image as credited.