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Since a large part of the current election recount court procedures
seem to involve race, how historically have such courts reacted to
such questions in terms of sustaining or curtailing black voting rights?

Among other cases with similar results the Eleventh Citcuit
sustained Bleckly County's at large voting system - continuing the
tradition of making the election of a black representative from such
area immposible.




               The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals  found that
            the at large voting system of Bleckly county GA is not
            discriminatory because no intent to deprive Blacks of the
            right to vote was evident when such system was established
            in 1912. The court notes that blacks could not even vote at
            such time. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that no
            judge involved in such a case at such level could failt to
            be aware of , or become aware, of the involved history.

                Racism and discrimination so permeated the social
            and political fabric that no local political act  taken
            escaped racial motivation. Since the federal retreat from
            civil rights  enforcement in the South in the 1870's in
            the Hayes-Tilden compromise, a continuing battle was fought
            with tacit federal approval to suppress blacks to the
            greatest extent possible. Why would the court ignore such
            fact unless, as evidenced by other decisions involving
            race, it seeks a second coming of such era? By the court's
            reasoning the act of  shooting a man felled by a dozen
            bullets  could be claimed to not be murder-lacking intent.
            Surely the man is already dead and the extra bullets were
            just "insurance" and - if he twitches - why a continuing
            series of bullets can be fired into him. After all the
            court will rule that there was no intent to kill him with
            the initial insurance shot  - actions already
            being taken to deprive him of life previously.
            Thus those twelve bullets pumped into an unfaithful lover
            discovered with another had nothing to do with intent to
            commit murder after the first shot. Enforced segregation
            and suppression of blacks was an issue so passionate as to
            elect generations of politicians and evoke lynching  and
            race riot. Often mobs lynching black victims (Whites were
            comparatively rarely lynched and almost never mutilated)
            riddled them with bullets to the extent that the bodies
            were unrecognizable. Every member of the mob could then
            boast of killing. Is it truly plausible that murder and
            racial discrimination escaped the court's notice of  being
            more motivated by inflamed passions rather than cold
            reason?



                Hoke Smith won the 1906 Georgia governor's campaign in a
            landslide. He had found an issue which galvanized the
            majority and that could be useful to the papers in
            providing sell out multiple extra editions in a single day.
            Indeed the aftermath of such campaign saw rioting
            in Atlanta that ended only by intervention of troops after
            the successful black defense of their neighborhoods and a
            resulting fear by whites of reprisal. Such riot consisted
            of murderous mob attacks on isolated blacks and black
            downtown businesses by whites ( including on virtually the
            site of the Eleventh Circuit Court) whose numbers were
            swollen by rural fair visitors. Neither the unresisting
            man, woman or child was spared death by such mob. Thus it
            would appear that the foundations of such court rest upon
            the ground stained with the spilled blood of those black
            Georgia citizens it's present decisions deny were subject
            to a racially discriminatory intent to deny them the vote.

            Smith's campaign theme was: "Deny blacks the vote to protect
            white women from black rapists". Indeed the hysteria thus
            generated resulted in white women discovering non-existent
            rapists under their beds and reports of attempted assaults
            upon women in homes whose addresses turned out to be vacant
            lots. An Editorial noted that "narrow buggy seats made it
            impossible for a white woman being driven by a black
            coachman to avoid touching him - making any real white man's
            blood boil". Others proposed sterilization of blacks and
            even genocide "if it would prevent even one such crime".
            Only a fraction of the blacks lynched (including several
            women and children) were even accused of rape or attempted
            rape. None of the blacks killed  in dozens of such pogrom
            style riot attacks on black communities were accused of any
            crime.

            Evidently Bleckly county was the sole Georgia county to be
            unaffected by the racial attitudes and activities of the
            time and was so lacking in prejudice as to be unaffected by
            such events. Doubtless it went completely  against Hoke
            Smith and denied blacks the right to vote by  other  means
            such as a discriminatory  poll tax or literacy test for
            reasons totally independent of race.  Adopting the at large
            voting system that has made it impossible for a black
            to be elected to this day was done for completely unrelated
            and, unstated other cause.

              Unfortunately there are no time machines (*1) which would
            allow the Eleventh Circuit to visit such polling places in
            realistic black face with their white wives on their arms in
            the era to see just what other means might be applied to
            prevent blacks from voting or enjoying rights of citizenship
            freely granted whites-if they could avoid being lynched for
            miscegenation (as occured) prior to being lynched for
            having the insolence to attempt to vote as black men.
            Perhaps then they might also  observe the Bleckly lynchings
            of Homer Howell (3/21,1912) or;  of Peter Jambo and James
            Jackson (7/15/1915) or of an unknown black in 1919
            for "wild talk" or; of Aaron Harris in 1923. Nor was
            Pulaski County from which Bleckly was carved in 1912 free
            from the habitual lynchings of blacks across
            the south of the era*. From 1890 to 1912 lynchings
            were recorded in Pulaski. In 1908 one double and two triple
            lynchings were recorded in Pulaski County. Where the right
            to due process in matters of life and death was so subject
            to repeated violation over decades based on race (when a
            criminal accusation was even asserted) the court's
            assertion that no intent to deny blacks the right to vote
            was evident in 1912 is at best gross error and at worst
            judicial dissembly.


              There is a public library a block north
            of such court that has Georgia newspapers on microfiche
            extending well beyond  the involved period. The Atlanta
            Papers for September 1906 should be quite revealing.
            Moreover, the Woodruff library at Clark Atlanta University
            maintains a special collection on such history with a
            concentration upon the Georgia area. The state of Georgia
            even maintains an Archives building immediately southeast
            of the gold (real) dome of the State Capital Building.



            *1 Theoretically such a machine is possible but outside
             human capability at this time as it involves spinning a
             neutronium  cylinder at high speed. A course  (orbit)
             could then be plotted which would bring one out before
             entry. ("Massive Spinning Cylinders and the Possibility of
             Global Causality Violation").





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