The Cafe' [Think Tank]

Credit AP/PATRICK SEMANSKY / The Baltimore City Council adopted a budget for the next fiscal year that cuts $22.4 million from the police department’s $550 million budget, including nearly $7 million from overtime spending. The cuts come days after protestors gathered outside City Hall demanding that the Baltimore Police Department be defunded altogether. The cuts are less than 5% of the total police department’s 2021 budget, which is 1.2% lower than the department’s budget from the previous year.  “I‌ ‌am‌ ‌proud‌ ‌to‌ ‌lead‌ ‌a‌ ‌City‌ ‌Council‌ ‌that‌ ‌has‌ ‌taken‌ ‌a‌ ‌decisive‌ ‌first‌ ‌step‌ ‌towards‌ ‌responsibly reprioritizing‌ ‌Baltimore’s‌ ‌budget,” City Council President Brandon Scott said Monday evening. “This‌ ‌is‌ ‌just‌ ‌a‌ ‌first‌ ‌step,‌ ‌and‌ ‌we‌ ‌must‌ ‌recognize‌ ‌we‌ ‌did‌ ‌not‌ ‌get‌ ‌here‌ ‌overnight.‌ ‌In‌ ‌order‌ ‌to‌ ‌reduce‌ ‌our‌ ‌dependence‌ ‌on‌ ‌policing,‌ ‌we‌ ‌must‌ ‌continue‌ ‌the‌ ‌work‌ ‌we‌ ‌have‌ ‌started tonight‌ ‌over‌ ‌the‌‌ ‌next‌ ‌term.” ...

Soon after passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal examiners were conducting voter registration, and black voter registration began a sharp increase. The cumulative effect of the Supreme Court's decisions, Congress' enactment of voting rights legislation, and the ongoing efforts of concerned private citizens and the Department of Justice, has been to restore the right to vote guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments. The Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress.

T he Voting Rights Act, adopted initially in 1965 and extended in 1970, 1975, and 1982, is generally considered the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the United States Congress. The Act codifies and effectuates the 15th Amendment's permanent guarantee that, throughout the nation, no person shall be denied the right to vote on account of race or color. In addition, the Act contains several special provisions that impose even more stringent requirements in certain jurisdictions throughout the country. Adopted at a time when African Americans were substantially disfranchised in many Southern states, the Act employed measures to restore the right to vote that intruded in matters previously reserved to the individual states. Section 4 ended the use of literacy requirements for voting in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina, where voter registration or turnout in...

  tHE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.  Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to ...

  Introduction To Federal Voting Rights Laws Before the Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Effect of the Voting Rights Act Before the Voting Rights Act Reconstruction and the Civil War Amendments Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed. At that time, although a few northern states permitted a small number of free black men to register and vote, slavery and restrictive state laws and practices led the franchise to be exercised almost exclusively by white males. Shortly after the end of the Civil War Congress enacted the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, which allowed former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union if they adopted new state constitutions that permitted universal male suffrage. The 14th Amendment, which conferred citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, was r...

  Chapter III FREEDOM OR BONDAGE -- THE LEGISLATIVE RECORD   Although Maryland colonists practiced Negro slavery as early as the 1640's, they did not give it legislative sanction until 1664. There were several reasons why the first slave law should have come at that particular time. Perhaps the most important factor was the rapidly rising number of Africans in the colony. In 1640, the black population had been a mere twenty individuals in a non-Indian population of about 600. In 1660, the number of blacks had risen to 760 out of 8,500. Thus, during those two decades, the ratio of blacks to whites had narrowed from one in thirty to one in ten. The African-American were a more visible element in society than they had formerly been. Furthermore, by the 1660's, Maryland was firmly committed to a tobacco staple economy that demanded an abundance of cheap labor. After the first serious tobacco depression, the result of the Navigation Act of 1660, economic conditions in the colony fa...