Letter: Incidents of voter restrictions are part of U.S. history

In regards to the gentleman who said voter restriction is not, nor has it ever been, a problem in this country, this is easily fact-checked and completely false. There are many examples.

One example is the Colfax (Louisiana) massacre on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873. White supremacists from surrounding districts converged, and the gathering ended with the slaughter of 150 Blacks, whose so-called crime was attempting to vote. As I said, this is just one of many examples. Also, check out 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina, when a white mob destroyed a Black-owned newspaper office and terrorized the African American community. Is this not voter restriction?

The term grandfathered-in comes from Jim Crow-era laws. Southerners had literacy tests that had to be passed to be able to vote. However, if your grandfather was a legal voter before the Civil War, you were exempt. Thus the tests only applied to Blacks and were deliberately made difficult.

To say voter suppression never happened shows a high level of historical ignorance.

Thomas Eberhart

Carleton

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Letter: Incidents of voter restrictions are part of U.S. history