Always question the systems that disenfranchise any segment of our population. Before slavery existed in Florida, there was a compromise between Native Americans, Africans and Caribbean fishermen in the territory of Florida. The warring nations Spain, France, England (Irish, Scottish, Welsh), the Dutch, the Portugal and Americans. As the political leaders, the elite planters wrote the slaves code
s, beginning with the 1676 Virginia revolt led by Nathaniel Bacon. Slave codes deprived free blacks of their rights and helped to separate slaves from poor whites, many of whom began their colonial experiences as indentured servants. Slave codes were amended throughout the years, giving planters unlimited control over their slaves. Native Americans have long suffered the effects of segregation and discrimination imposed by the U.S. Native Americans were not granted the full rights and protections of U.S. citizenship until long after African Americans and women were, with many having to wait until the Nationality Act of 1940 to become citizens. This was long after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which granted citizenship to African Americans but not, the Supreme Court decided in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), to Native Americans. Native Americans are the only group of Americans who were forcibly removed en masse from the lands on which they and their ancestors had lived so that others could claim this land and its resources. White women had been citizens of the United States since its very beginning even though they were not granted the full rights of citizenship. The Compromise of 1877 was the second installment of disenfranchisement of Native Americans, African Americans and other Floridians. The first installment of disenfranchisement in Florida was "The Patriot uprising in 1812 East Florida" to "The Second Seminole War 1835-1842. The third installment was the formation of the new Republican Party The Dixiecrats' in 1948. Their presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, became a Republican in 1964. The Dixiecrats represented the Southern Democratic Party's control of presidential elections in the South and most seats in Congress, partly through decades of disenfranchisement of blacks since the Compromise of 1877. After all these installments have been paid to the disenfranchised of Florida came the Coup De Gras "The Southern Manifesto of 1956" On March 12, 1956 Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of the House Rules Committee, routinely used his influential position to thwart civil rights legislation. Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of the House Rules Committee, introduced the Southern Manifesto in a speech on the House Floor. Formally titled the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” it was signed by 82 Representatives and 19 Senators—roughly one-fifth of the membership of Congress and all from states that had once composed the Confederacy. It marked a moment of southern defiance against the Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS) decision, which determined that separate school facilities for black and white school children were inherently unequal. The Manifesto attacked Brown as an abuse of judicial power that trespassed upon states’ rights. It urged southerners to exhaust all “lawful means” to resist the “chaos and confusion” that would result from school desegregation. Smith had cooperated with several Senators to develop the Manifesto, and Walter F. George of Georgia introduced it in the other chamber. Under Smith, the Rules Committee became a graveyard for numerous civil rights initiatives in the 1950s. In his prefatory remarks, Smith declared that the ship of state had “drifted from her moorings,” and described the high court’s record on civil rights as one of “repeated deviation” from the fundamental separation of powers and constitutionally implied autonomy of the states. A small group of southern Members rose on the House Floor to applaud Smith’s brief speech; no Member rose to speak against it. Floridians that sighed "The Southern Manifesto" Charles E. Sikes, A.S. Herlong, Jr., Paul G. Rogers, James A. Haley, D.R. Matthews, , George A. Smathers, Spessard L. Holland. Now, here we are in 2021 with Covid, Police Brutality, Invasion of Capitol, Afghanistan, Abortion, Voter Suppression and "The Pandemic of White Supremacy in a Capitalistic Democracy"! What are we conscientious American to do?
