
          Crackdown in the Black Belt: On to Greene County
          By Williams, RandallRandall Williams
          Vol. 7, No. 3, 1985, pp. 2-5
          
          Fifth of July "not guilty" verdicts by a
federal jury in Selma have freed the voting rights activists known as
the Marion Three. Stymied, for the moment, is the Reagan Justice
Department's effort to help local white officials reverse the
electoral gains of black voters in many rural counties of the South
since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
          As the Marion (Perry County) defendants were acquitted, trials for
five other activists from nearby Greene County began. At this writing,
two of these cases have ended with hung juries in federal court in
Birmingham.
          The various trials and the situations from which they have arisen
are complicated, involving multiple-count indictments, scores of
witnesses, political infighting, and conflicts between the ideals and
realities of voting procedures. Regardless, a central fact is becoming
increasingly clear to courtroom observers:
          These cases only incidentally involve voting; the real issues are
power and control in the parts of the Deep South where black
majorities are wresting public offices from 

historically entrenched
white elites.
          For a decade after passage of the Voting Rights Act, black
population majorities in Alabama Black Belt counties were not
transformed into electoral victories. Greene County was the exception,
with blacks capturing all of the county's elective offices as early as
1968. By 1975, others had begun to catch up. The school boards in the
five counties where the FBI has been conducting its voter fraud
investigations are good illustrations. In 1975, blacks held all five
school board seats in Greene County, but only two of five in Sumter,
one of five in Lowndes, and none in Perry and Wilcox. Following the
elections of 1984, blacks filled all the school board seats in Sumter,
Greene and Wilcox, and four of five in both Perry and Lowndes.
          These gains came through hard work and through increasingly
sophisticated voter registration efforts by black activists, most
recently in conjunction with the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign
which proved especially strong in heavily black rural counties.
          The outcome of the voting rights revolution in Alabama, has been a
bitter factionalization within the Black Belt counties. Lining up on
one side have been almost all of the black leadership, the vast
majority of black voters, and political organizations like the Perry
County Civic League headed by Albert Turner and the Greene County
Civic League headed by Spiver Gordon (whose trial begins in
October). Within the past couple of years, beginning about the time
blacks began winning all the elections, white dominated political
action coalitions (commonly referred to as "PAC" or the "Coalition")
emerged in several Black Belt counties. The white leadership of these
groups courted blacks to run as candidates who were less
objectionable--to whites--than the black activists in the civic
leagues.
          John Zippert, a white civil rights activist who has worked for more
than a decade with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, describes
a leaflet circulated by the PAC in Greene County opposing several
measures proposed by the black community for the 1984 elections. Among
these were an increase in county tax on parimutuel betting at the
white-owned Greene County greyhound racing track; reallocation of some
dog track revenues to give funds to organizations directly serving
poor and black people; annexation of three predominantly black
subdivisions into the city of Eutaw (whites still control thirty-three
of forty-two city governments in the Black Belt), and an increase in
 ad valorem  property tax rates in Greene
County for the support of the public schools.
          All of these measures were in the interest of most black people in
Greene County. "After PAC's initial meetings were held, " says
Zippert, "I learned that PAC had selected a slate of black
candidates to run for the county commission and other offices. PAC
stated that these candidates were 'responsible,'
meaning in effect that they would take their direction from powerful
white people."
          According to Zippert, the 1984 elections in Greene County came down
to a choice between two slates of black candidates. "One slate was
supported by the Greene County Civic League, dedicated to pursuing a
course of action in the interest of establishing and maintaining
effective political participation by low income persons of any race or
creed and by blacks who comprise a majority in Greene County who
traditionally have been excluded from political participation by
whites; the other slate consisted of blacks who had made a deal with
the whites and were willing to serve the interests of whites in the
county.` Race and racial politics were the dominant factors in the
1984 local elections in Greene County."
          In those elections, both political factions vigorously campaigned
and engaged in voter registration, including absentee
registration. Neither side had great success recruiting from the
other, although blacks in the "coalitions"
outnumbered whites aligned with the civic leagues.
          Voter registration figures for both blacks and whites in the
ten-county Black Belt of west Alabama include dead people, folk who
moved away years ago, and voters registered in the county where they
live and in the county where they work. The latest figures available
are inaccurate, but the relative numbers are nonetheless
significant. From the pre-1965 era when there were essentially no
registered black voters here, the 1982 registration figures show some
70,000 black voters and 62,000 whites.
          The 138 blacks who currently hold public office in these ten
counties account for nearly half of the state's total of elected black
officials, which is among the highest in the nation. With increased
voter registration and the diminishing of old fears--black fears, that
is; whites fear a different 

bogeyman and imagine they now hear him
scratching at the door--comes the promise of additional black sheriffs,
school board members, county commissioners, district attorneys and
probate judges. With black political power comes control of county
revenues, sufficient clout to secure black participation in government
public works contracts and programs, several seats in the Alabama
legislature, influence on the outcome of a Congressional seat, and the
margin of difference in a close US Senate race.
          On July 5, all of these prospects were on the minds of the Marion
Three defendants as they embraced. waved to the press, and sang with
their families and supporters on the steps of the Selma courthouse
soon after the not guilty verdicts and after the courtroom audience
had stood to loudly applaud, then cheer the departing jury. Albert
Turner, the most prominent of the defendants, renewed his contention
that the man with the most to gain from the intimidation of black
voters in Alabama is freshman GOP Senator Jeremiah Denton.
          The far-right Denton, who voted against the extension of the 1965
Voting Rights Act, who has defended Jerry Falwell's attack on Desmond
Tutu, and whose re-election in 1986 is by no means assured, has
branded as a "nefarious lie" Turner's view that Denton bears a
measure of responsibility for the current Justice Department
crackdown.
          Yet, in several instances over the previous four years, Alabama's
junior Senator has intervened with the Justice Department in Alabama
voting rights matters, taking the side of local white powerholders
against the interests of black citizens. Too, the offices of the US
Attorneys in Alabama now bulge with Reagan appointees made upon the
advice of Senator Denton.
          Proof of Denton's involvement in the west Alabama cases is not
necessary in order to appreciate the black activists' fundamental
claim that they are being selectively prosecuted as part of a larger
effort to thwart the emergence of political power in areas of the
rural South. Grassroots black organizers are convinced they are
witnessing a second period of Redemption, when whites who have lost
local power, as they did during Reconstruction, are using whatever
measures they can to displace blacks from the political process. In
the view of the Albert Turners of the Black Belt, the Reagan
Administration is abandoning the black citizens whom the federal
government championed during the Civil Rights movement and is placing
its authority and might with the whites who previously held control
and who want to again.
          A General Accounting Office investigation of the Federation of
Southern Cooperatives, (based at Epes in Sumter County), is- seen as
one recent example of federal pressure being applied after local
whites made complaints against the black economic development
organization. After several years of intense scrutiny of the
Federation's books turned up no wrongdoing, the investigation was
closed, leaving the Federation badly crippled by the constant
harassment.
          Attorneys representing Union (Alabama) mayor, James Colvin, the
first of the Greene County defendants to go on trial in Birmingham
this summer, made allegations of similar politically motivated
pressure from the Justice Department as they argued a selective
prosecution motion.
          Ira Burnim, a Southern Poverty Law Center attorney on Colvin's
defense team and the lead counsel in a civil lawsuit filed against the
Justice Department (see Southern Changes, May/June 1985), tells of a
conversation with Marshall Jarrett of Justice's Public Integrity
Section.
          Jarrett made clear to attorney Burnim that the investigation and
prosecution,! in Greene County are part of a larger effort by the
government not only in the Black Belt of Alabama but in black majority
counties of Mississippi. Burnim says there exists a letter from an
assistant U.S. attorney general to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch which
treats "the problem of voter fraud" as a single interconnected
issue. Another Justice Department official has said that the
investigations were brought on by "arrogance on the part of
blacks."
          As arrogance is not yet a federal crime, the government needed
other charges to place before grand juries. In the summer of 1984,
Justice Department officials--including William Bradford Reynolds and
Stephen Trott--devised a new policy for federal investigations of
election offenses which, in effect, enabled federal prosecutors to
target black civil rights activists in Southern black majority
counties. The FBI was ordered to Greene and the other Black Belt
counties prior to the September 1984 elections to collect
evidence. Judging by the testimony during Colvin's trial, practically
every citizen in the town of Union must have been interviewed by the
FBI Colvin's defense lawyers found it curious that the federal agents
uncovered evidence of alleged wrongdoing only by people affiliated
with the Greene County Civic League.
          In a single summer's day of interviews with voters in Greene
County, Colvin's defense team investigators identified eight
fraudulent ballots, four fraudulently witnessed ballots, and other
election offenses committed by political opponents of those who have
been indicted by the government.
          "We're talking about vote fraud involving federal elections and
not only members of PAC, but public officials as well," Burnim
maintains.
          One person who has lived outside Greene County for years told a
defense investigator that he did not vote in last September's
Democratic primary or primary run-off elections in Greene. Yet a
ballot affidavit in his name was among the evidentiary materials
collected by the US Attorney's office. The ballot affidavit was
notarized by a white Greene 

County public official who is a known
supporter of the PAC.
          After the September 1984 elections, FBI agents
interrogated voters to determine if campaigners for the Greene County
Civic League had cast fraudulent ballots. Meanwhile, Civic League
leaders turned over to the US Attorney's office evidence of similar
alleged misconduct by their opponents in PAC. No PAC campaigners or
officials have been implicated in the Justice Department
investigation.
          Burnim tells of numerous PAC-related incidents which an intense
federal investigation should have uncovered. In one instance, an FBI
agent approached a voter whose name and address appeared on two
absentee ballots cast in the election. The voter identified her
ballot, but told the FBI she had never seen the second ballot, which
was witnessed by the signatures of two PAC supporters. The FBI
apparently never questioned the two individuals who had signed the
ballot.
          Under Alabama law, it is illegal (indeed, it is so written on the
ballot) for candidates to witness absentee ballots or give assistance
to voters. Yet Burnim presented the court with evidence of several
instances where PAC candidates were witnessing absentee ballots. None
of those voters were interviewed by the FBI.
          Other selective prosecution evidence presented by Colvin's
attorneys included cases of persons voting absentee who lived outside
Greene County and were thus ineligible to vote. One person whose name
appeared on an absentee ballot notarized by a public official
affiliated with PAC told defense investigators he not only did not
request to vote in Greene County but was registered in another state
at the time of the election. The public official notarizing this
ballot was not indicted.
          Much of the evidence of PAC violations paralleled material which
had been delivered to the Justice Department last fall by members of
the Greene County Civic League, yet apparently none of it had been
followed up by the FBI. "Is it not startling," asks Burnim,
"that all of the indictments have been against Greene County Civic
League leaders when it took us just three days to uncover vote fraud
by PAC? Wouldn't it be striking if we can find misconduct on both
sides and the government cannot?"
          In a written opinion denying Burnim's selective prosecution motion,
a federal magistrate concluded that in terms of judicial resources the
US attorney might be justified in indicting the Greene County
defendants while not pursuing the complaints against PAC because the
number of incidents revealed in the three-day defense investigation
was less than the number gathered by the eight-month FBI
investigation.
          A more realistic assessment is that the Reagan Justice Department
is cooperating with local whites intent on reversing and dismantling
the black movement for democratic political empowerment.
          
            This article is based on reporting by Southern Changes
editors Allen Tullos and Randall Williams and on articles published in
the Green County Democrat. Previous articles in this series have
appeared in Southern Changes for March/April and May/June,
1985. 
          
        