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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAn incarcerated teacher taught his students that Jim Crow literacy tests were racist. Then he got fired.
https://www.wbez.org/stories/incarcerated-teacher-fired-for-teaching-about-racism/95a20032-3507-48a2-aef8-afac11482706Now the instructor, Anthony McNeal, is suing in federal court, claiming the counselor and the prison warden violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
McNeal was teaching a peer-led civics class the state is required to provide for people exiting prison at Centralia Correctional Center in southern Illinois. At the end of February, a federal lawsuit against the counselor and the prison warden was filed on behalf of McNeal, who said he was fired because he told students the literacy tests were racist.
(snip)
Nathan Tucker, the prison counselor supervising the class, interrupted McNeal and instructed him to present literacy tests as having a legitimate nondiscriminatory purpose of ensuring that voters knew what they were voting for, according to the complaint. Tucker did not respond to a request for comment.
marble falls
(60,386 posts)... that had significant minority populations and mostly in the South?
ProfessorGAC
(68,656 posts)...if it was just informative, why was one required to pass it to vote?
The fact that failing the test meant one couldn't vote is proof it was no just to ensure informed voters.
Sounds like Tucker is a sucker for whitewashiing.
ret5hd
(21,161 posts)be careful
one wrong answer means you lose your job:
https://www.openculture.com/2014/07/literacy-test-louisiana-used-to-suppress-the-black-vote.html
Maeve
(42,778 posts)or maybe this one
6. In the space below, draw three circles, one inside (engulfed by) the other.
Is that one and then one inside another and you fail if you draw two inside one? Intentionally ambiguous? (of course it was!) And "draw a line around" could be rejected if it was more a circle than a line, depending on who was taking the test and who was scoring it.
malaise
(275,650 posts)Eff the racist administrators
LiberalFighter
(53,193 posts)JustAnotherGen
(33,058 posts)They administered it in Portuguese in Talladega in 1956.
They left tax payers and voters no choice but to cheat.
ananda
(30,015 posts)I remember Jim Crow well.
A man used to come by the house to collect the
$2 poll tax.
Everything was separated into White and Colored.
And Black people rode in the back of the bus,
and most of them lived in subsidized housing
or those little shabby shotgun houses.
Hermit-The-Prog
(36,157 posts)ananda
(30,015 posts)...
yellowdogintexas
(22,644 posts)regardless of any other thing. If we did not address anyone more than 20 years older as "Miss Jane" or "Mister Joe" we would catch it when we got home. Also yes ma'm an yes sir. Sometime he would tell us in front of the elder person "who do you think you are, calling ____by her/his first name?"
Race did not matter with him.
I grew up in Kentucky, on the Tennessee state line, so this was exceptional for the time and the place (1950s- 1960s)
4lbs
(7,210 posts)It was established long ago through the court system in other cases, that prisoners (and many ex-cons) have nearly all their rights stripped once they are convicted.
If you have ever been convicted of a crime, then your employer can drug test you as often as they see fit. No amount of whining about "Right to Privacy" and "Illegal Search and Seizure" will work. If you decline, they can just simply fire you. If you try to take them to court claiming illegal termination, you will be asked why you declined a drug test, being an ex-con and all.
Many ex-cons/prisoners already cannot vote, own handguns, nor can they associate with other ex-cons. It may take as long as 7 or 10 years after their release to get those "rights" back. Even then, some people will give them some major league "side-eye" if they say, buy a gun or associate with another ex-con.
Any DUI/DWI on your record? Well then, the police can search your vehicle at will. The DUI/DWI automatically gives them "probable cause" and as a condition you automatically consent to any search. They can also question you as they see fit to determine your location whenever a crime takes place, to see if you were in the "general area" at the time.
So, even though his complaints may be valid, they might not hold up in court based on those above precedents.
MichMan
(12,677 posts)Last edited Thu Mar 21, 2024, 08:13 PM - Edit history (1)
Calling him an educator is a bit of a stretch.
He is an inmate serving a life sentence for first degree murder teaching other inmates in a peer led prison class.
WhiskeyGrinder
(23,428 posts)NanaCat
(2,332 posts)And a vicious ad hominem to boot.
yardwork
(63,434 posts)That means that it's ok that the prison is demanding that mandatory classes for inmates teach false information?
Your takeaway from this whole story is that the inmate doesn't deserve to be called an educator?
marble falls
(60,386 posts)MichMan
(12,677 posts)I did some training in basic statistics to coworkers at a manufacturing plant I retired from.
That means I can now refer to myself as a retired teacher and educator. That was something that never occurred to me before.
marble falls
(60,386 posts)... himself. We are in the top three nations for incarcerating our population. A lot of us productive citizens are former and current prisoners. Reducing someone to "$60 for killing someone" is easy and unfair. Especially in a murdering over armed population like the US.
MichMan
(12,677 posts)Too bad the person he murdered lost every opportunity to have a fulfilling productive life.
I am very forgiving to someone making a poor decision and committing a robbery, burglary, or stealing a car. Much less forgiving to someone who commits rape or murder.
marble falls
(60,386 posts)... prosecute a murderer we aren't looking for the justice for the victim. We are looking for justice for the perpetrator. We are judging him as someone who's broken a societal value or norm. The dead are beyond justice or anything else. They are evidence of a crime against society, society is reaffirming it's norm regarding murder.
Rape victims get no justice. If a person is wrongly convicted for rape and sentenced, did the rape victim get justice? How do you make a rape victim whole?
Iris
(15,938 posts)Frances
(8,569 posts)A man gave it to me with just him and me in the office.
When I finished the test I asked the man if I passed.
He pointed to several questions and said, You missed this and this and this
I said, But did I pass?
He answered,You are white. You passed.
A friend from Tennessee said her mother volunteered to help administer literacy tests. Her mother was told to put a small W for white at the top of tests given to whites.
TheRickles
(2,292 posts)That was also the year my friend told me about her mother. I dont know what year her mother volunteered
TheRickles
(2,292 posts)marble falls
(60,386 posts)Solly Mack
(91,802 posts)DemocraticPatriot
(5,410 posts)That would certainly get rid of a lot of THEIR voters.......
AwakeAtLast
(14,217 posts)The only free state I know of that has a 'slave house'.
Some of the reddest parts of the country are here.
ProudMNDemocrat
(18,512 posts)One has NO Constitutional rights.
WhiskeyGrinder
(23,428 posts)under the Eighth and so on.
NanaCat
(2,332 posts)As per the ACLU:
For instance, they retain many free speech rights, such as:
Having the right to criticize prison conditions in their communications with people inside and outside the prison;
Having the right to express their political viewpoints and receive letters, books, magazines and etc that express said political viewpoint, as long as it is not seditious or violent in nature;
Not having speech or reception of letters, books, magazines and so on restricted for arbitrary reasons;
Are those free speech rights the same as outside the prison walls? Of course not, but they are nowhere near eradicated altogether, either.
Cannot believe that so many right here on DU think that prisoners don't retain certain fundamental rights.