Stupidest Shithole in America: Evergreen, Alabama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There are many, many shitholes all across America -- like Nelson, Georgia; Mississippi; Dietrich, Idaho; Burkesville, Kentucky; Pickens County, South Carolina; and Henderson, Texas.

We're adding this place to the list, but obviously it's white Republicans who are to blame:

A federal judge in Alabama on Monday reinstated federal oversight over the voting practices of a city there, in what election law specialists said was the first such move since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in June.

Judge Callie V. S. Granade, of Federal District Court in Mobile, used a mechanism in the law that the Supreme Court had left untouched, Section 3, which allows jurisdictions that have intentionally discriminated against minority voters to be "bailed in" to the oversight requirements.

Relying on Section 3, Judge Granade ordered the city, Evergreen, to submit some changes in voting procedures to the Department of Justice or a federal court for review before they can go into effect.

So what's the problem?

Evergreen, an enclave of 3,900 people between Mobile and Montgomery, has a troubled history and has in recent years been found to have improperly excluded minority voters from its rolls and redrawn its district lines to concentrate black voters, who are in the majority, into just two of the five districts, limiting black voting power.

Maybe it's a nice place otherwise. I don't know. I have a lot of family in Alabama, which was home to one of my grandfathers, I've been down there a few times, and it's not all bad (anymore). But clearly its long history of racism, including institutionalized, government-sanctioned racism, continues, and Evergreen, other municipalities, and the state itself must be held accountable for what they're doing to disenfranchise and disempower blacks. And if it takes the federal government to step in, as it must, to fix the problem, so be it.

You know, because of the Civil War and pretty much the entire course of American history since then.