A Jar of Beans

In his eulogy for John Lewis remarking on voting rights, President Obama referred to jelly beans in a jar.

The reference is real.

In many places in say, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and the rest of the deep south in the bad old days of outright Jim Crow — before the 1965 Voting Rights Act that Lewis fought for, was beaten for — when Black people tried to register to vote they’d be told they had to pass a test or two or three.

One or the most notrorious was the bean jar. The prospective registrant would be shown a gallon or even 5-gallon clear glass jar filled with beans, jelly, or otherwise. The aspiring voter would be told he or she needed to give the exact number in the jar.

Of course, that’s impossible and was and is meant to be. Even if there had been an actual count of the beans and even if the person seeking to register had gotten that right, well who was to say it wasn’t wrong? But of course, no one botehred with that – that was not the point.

No, the point was to devise a test only for Black people that no one, Black or white, could have passed to be able to vote.

Having failed to guess the number of beans in the jar, the hopeful registrant would be told in demeaning racial terms “Boy (Girl), Y’all work on that and come back next year.”

No, Justices Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch could not pass the test either. But their rulings eviscerating the 1965 Voting Rights Act take us back to the time of the jar of beans test – making them paradigms of Jim Crow. That old crow? He’s sitting right on their shoulder.

This is true, was true, this bean jar voting registration test. So is the fact that we have had forms of voting by mail for a very long time in the United States.

Elections were changed and subverted for nearly 100 years by disabling the franchise through race. But voting by mail? No. As we’ve learned again lately, the army that fought to end slavery got to vote by mail in 1864 – even as it fought up and down Virginia in the east and through Tennessee and into Georgia in the west.

No one can say there has not ever been a misuse here and there of this means of casting a vote; but to say that it is universally untrustworthy when it is almost universally trustworthy, well that’s as bad as that jar of beans.

Next time you’re in a candy store or a market with those big self-serve bins of candy,  take a look at the ones holding the jelly beans. Ask yourself if you would have been able to register to vote in say Alabama or Mississippi or Georgia or the Florida Panhandle in1920 or, or even 1960.

Or, this year, think about that when you fill in your mail ballot, then have a jelly bean or two or ten – you don’t have to count them to vote.