Am I the only one who finds the following scene a bit odd?
As reported in the Washington Post, here is former President Clinton campaigning for Florida Democrats before a largely black audience at Miami Dade Community College:
Clinton urged his listeners to vote, asking them to undo troubles of past Florida elections. He told them that he was old enough to remember a time when there was a poll tax in the South that disenfranchised black voters.
“I’ve seen black people turned away from the polls in droves,” he said, drawing cheers.
This was so successful it suggests that Mondale and Lautenberg could win similar cheers by recalling the evils of slavery….
Florida’s going to have a terrific black turnout, and they may well hand Jeb Bush his hat as a result.
We’ll see I suppose.
Well, he’s on safer ground with this one than on some of his past whoppers, but it still rings a bit hollow. Unlike his claim that he witnesses numerous church burnings as a child (which was demonstrably false, since there weren’t any church burnings in Arkansas during his childhood), this claim could technically be true. Bill clinton was born in 1946. The 24th Amendment, which outlawed poll taxes, was not ratified until January, 1964 (shortly before Bubba’s 18th birthday).
Of course, the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18, was not ratified until 1971. So Clinton was not actually eligible to vote until 1967. So, unless he made a habit of hanging around polling stations as a child, it is unlikely he saw anything (much less people of of sort being turned away “in droves”). Even if he did, it’s still unlikely he actually saw people being turned away. In 1960, about the earliest Bubba can realistically claim to have been aware of such matters, only 5% of Mississippi’s eligible blacks were actually registered to vote. I haven’t found the black registration rate for Arkansas, but it’s hard to imagine they were significantly higher than the neighboring state.
I am not condoning the measures taken by the political machines who ran the South (all Democrats, BTW) to keep blacks from voting, not by any means. But it seems to me that if only 5% of a class of citizens are registered to vote, then not very many are going to even show up at a polling station, much less be among the subset that gets “turned away.” And, even to the extent that such might have really been the case in some areas, I seriously doubt Bubba was watching.