NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE PRESIDENT CONGRATULATES VIRIGINA GOVERNOR ON VOTING RIGHTS ACTION
NEW YORK (April 22, 2016) -- National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial today commended Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe for his move to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons.
“In the wake of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, felony disenfranchisement replaced Jim Crow as a primary means of suppressing voters of color,” Morial said. “It’s no coincidence that, as African Americans are disproportionately represented at every level of the criminal justice system from arrest to sentencing, so we are disproportionately disenfranchised. Gov. McAuliffe has taken a major step toward righting the racial wrongs of the past.”
Morial noted that the architects of Virginia’s voter restrictions in the early 20th Century made no secret of their intentions. The late Congress member Carter Glass said the provisions would “eliminate the ‘darkey’ as a political factor” so that “there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”
Virginia has been one of three states with the highest rate of disenfranchisement of people of color – more than one in five – and one of 12 states where felons have been banned from voting for life.
Morial called on the lawmakers of the 11 remaining states -- Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wyoming – to heed the example of Gov. McAuliffe.
“These restrictions are a relic of our racist past,” Morial said. “A truly representative democracy must not throw up barriers to participation, but embrace every background and point of view.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Teresa Candori
212-558-5362 | tcandori@nul.org
