
          Making Votes Count in Arkansas--Challenge to Plantation-Style
Politics
          By Fleshler, DanDan Fleshler
          Vol. 12, No. 3, 1990, pp. 14-15
          
          Nearly every day this past year, M.C. Jeffers watched news reports
of Eastern European crowds clamoring for meaningful elections, for the
right to run for political office. He heard smug commentators explain
that people in places like Romania yearned for American-style
democracy. And he wondered if real democracy would ever reach the
Mississippi Delta in Eastern Arkansas.
          "I came up during the time of the poll tax," says
Mr. Jeffers, 67, an African_American realtor in the Delta town of
Forrest City, "when only a few blacks voted, and when they did,
their votes didn't do any good...Now we don't have the tax but our
votes still don't do any good...Maybe this ruling'll change
that. .. Maybe we'll get what everyone else in the world
wants."
          He was referring to a recent Federal district court decision in Jeffers v. Clinton, an LDF case. After hearing
evidence of the harassment of black_voters and candidates, as well as
the manipulation of district boundaries to dilute black voting
strength, the court ruled that Arkansas blacks' voting_rights had been
violated. And it ruled that state legislative boundaries drawn in 1981
must be redrawn.
          The ruling, announced on December 5, 1989, called for the largest
statewide redistricting ever ordered under the Voting Rights
Act. Mr. Jeffers, one of 17 black plaintiffs, said he hoped the
decision "would help blacks have real input into
decision-making. Until we get it, conditions aren't going to
change."
          The 14 counties in Eastern Arkansas affected by the ruling have
some of the world's richest farmland, and some of America's poorest
people. Amidst fields abutting the Mississippi that yield abundant
harvest of rice, cotton and soybeans, more than 40 percent of Delta
residents live in poverty. Blacks comprise about half of the area's
population, but the vast majority of land in each town is owned by a
handful of wealthy whites--many of whom are descendants of former
slaveowners.
          "They pay minimum wages when the fields need working," says
Clinton Harris, the black mayor of Wilmot. where unemployment hovers
around 60 percent for macho of the year. "And in the winter, when
the fields don't need working, we just don't have enough jobs."
          The Jeffers trial presented a sobering picture
of the barriers to African_Americans trying to change this bleak status quo through the electoral process. Although
blacks comprise 16 percent of the state's population, there is only
one black in the 100-member House. In several majority black counties
in Eastern Arkansas, white legislators have been elected with little
black support.
          The plaintiffs challenged the way in which majority black_districts
were carved up to submerge African_American votes in larger pools of
white votes by the 1981 reapportionment plan. While this plan created
five legislative districts with majority-black_populations, the
plaintiffs argued that as many as 16 majority-black_districts could
have been created.
          The court agreed, and ruled that the drawing of current district
boundaries violated Section II of the Voting_Rights_Act, which
requires proof of discriminatory results for electoral requirements
and practices to be illegal. The decision called for "a new lawful
plan" to be drafted in time for the 1990 elections.
          In finding voting_rights violations, the court also relied on
extensive evidence of current "difficulties experienced! by blacks in
electoral politics" in Arkansas.
          For example, the court cited the experience of Roy 

Lewellan, a
black lawyer in Marianna, Arkansas, who "ran for the State Senate
in 1986 against a white incumbent... At about the same time, the
Sheriff and Prosecuting Attorney instituted a well publicized criminal
prosecution against Mr. Lewellan. Mr. Lewellan...gave a number of
reasons for his belief that the prosecution was designed to discourage
him in particular and black political activity in general. We find
this testimony entirely credible."
          Interviewed after the trial, Mr. Lewellan noted that the man he had
tried to unseat, State Senator Paul Benham, is a representative of the
"Old South, from an old farm family, typical of the politicians who
haven't done a thing for black_people in this district."
          Mr. Lewellan said that Senator Benham recently voted against a bill
that would have exempted more than 60,000 poor residents from paying
taxes. "His rich friends would have had to pay a few hundred
dollars more in taxes, so he and other white senators opposed it...His
friends know I'm in favor of helping the poor, and that's why they
didn't want me to run against him."
          Many other examples of racially-motivated political harassment were
presented at the trial. Helmet Mayor Harris testified that on election
day in 1986, a gang of whites (including elected_officials and a
policeman with a gun) arrived at the polling place and prevented him
and others from aiding illiterate black political voters.
          Mr. Harris calls those responsible for the harassment "the
Godfathers... They own the land, the mill, the bank." He and other
black political activists claim that the white power structure has
openly resisted efforts to improve economic conditions for Delta
blacks: "They don't want industry coming down here, because
factories'll pay higher wages than they give to folks working the
fields..."
          The plaintiffs in Jeffers hope that black
political empowerment gained through redistricting will help to
counterbalance the power of "Godfathers" throughout the Delta.
          Under court order, the Arkansas Board of Apportionment is currently
drawing up new legislative districts, a process being monitored by
attorneys Penda Hair, Dayna Cunningham, and Sheila Thomas of the Legal
Defense Fund; P. A. Hollingsworth of Little Rock; and Olly Neal of
Marianna.
          Arkansas Election Update
          Seven black candidates were nominated in March 29 primary elections
in the ten Arkansas Delta districts affected by Jeffers v. Clinton. In one of those races, a black
woman won the nomination for coroner of Lee County, the first
county-wide electoral success for a black candidate in Arkansas since
Reconstruction.
          In addition to the seven black nominees, an old-line white
conservative was defeated in another race by a white liberal. "The
elections in some of the white-on-white races turned into referendums
on the 'good old boy' political leadership in the region," noted
the LDF's Dan Fleshier.
          And voter turnout increased substantially--by 10 percent or more in
some places--throughout the Delta.
          
            Daniel Fleshler is director of communications of the
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. His article is adapted
from Equal Justice: LDF News.
          
        
