#269: Things Ain’t Always Gone Be This Way

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers: “Voting wasn’t just about rights, Mama told me. It was about the fact that we needed to honor the Black folks who had come before us, the ones who weren’t here anymore. On voting Tuesday that year, Mama picked me up after school and drove us to the polls. She told me she had a very important job for me to do. She explained that I would take the hand of each old, Black person she would send my way. These would be people who couldn’t read. They knew the candidates they wanted to vote for, but because they couldn’t recognize the names on the ballot, they needed me to call out all the names for them, and then, they’d tell me which of those names they wanted to vote for.

I don’t know how many old Black folks I helped at the polls, only that when I stood in the booth with them, I did what my mother had asked. I called out the names, and they’d tell me who they wanted to vote for. Then, very carefully, I put my finger by each name they’d chosen. I watched as they filled out the ballot. And I’d beam as each old person heaped praise on me, telling me how smart I was, how sweet. What a good little girl my mother had raised me to be.” (15 min)