As Corey Stewart continues to pursue a redistricting plan that relegates new communities of color to powerlessness for another decade, it is striking that he is also demanding that the Department of Justice have no oversight over the process to ensure fairness and opportunity for all Virginians.
George Teamoh, a freedman and delegate to the Reconstruction-era Consititutional Convention in 1869
Corey Stewart and his anti-immigrant allies descend from a political heritage in Virginia that has attempted to eschew federal oversight of racist lawmaking that goes back a couple centuries. One of the most exciting times in Virginia’s rich history is the period of Reconstruction immediately flowing the Civil War, when lawmakers joined with freed slaves and other citizen activists to try and build a deeply democratic Virginia that could creatively make full and engaged citizens out of all its residents.
Some Virginian politicians did everything they could to stop that transformation, using their words to paint ugly pictures of a future government and society overrun by lazy freed slaves. They appealed to the fiercely local instincts of white Virginians swept up in the turmoil of rapid and bewildering change, saying that a corrupt and tyranical federal government with no interest in local affairs was taking away their liberties.
Despite their best efforts, history proved to be on the side of the local reformers and the federal government that backed them, and in 1869 the Underwood Constitution, as it came to be known, was passed, granting voting rights and citizenship to Black Virginians. That same year, 6 African-Americans were elected to the state Senate and 23 to the House of Delegates.
But over the three decades that followed, conservatives regained control from the reformers, and the ability of the federal government to ensure the ongoing success from the gains of the Reconstruction period was weakened. In 1902, the inheritors of that conservative past in Virginia passed a new constitution, dissolving voting rights and other citizenship rights for black Virginians.
From these revanchist politicians, to Harry Byrd, to the Massive Resistance movement, to Corey Stewart, Virginia has an unfortunate history of some powerful citizens fighting to maintain power for the few and already powerful.
We have to call on the best of Virginia’s deeply democratic traditions to build a future that is fair and secure for all of us, from the leaders of the slave revolts, to George Teamoh and the freedmen advancing the cause of reconstruction, to the black Readjusters, to the everyday civil rights heroes and sheroes, to those who stood up for change in 2008, to the Virginia DREAMers and all those who yearn for opportunity and justice in our state.
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