Guyanese Online

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

Chris Wallace, formerly of Fox News, was visibly surprised when, in a CNN+ interview, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones reminded him that the United States was not established as a democracy. The creator of the 1619 Project informed Wallace that, at its birth, the nation still enslaved millions of Africans. She could have added genocide against Indigenous peoples and that, anyhow, only land-owners could vote.

The matter of a universal franchise did not surface until after the Civil War ended in 1865 and the right to vote, fundamental to democracy, has been on a tortuous journey which is now being traveled backwards more than 150 years later. President Andrew Johnson scuttled Reconstruction and empowered the defeated states to set up their governments and, between 1865 and 1866; they promptly enacted laws — the Black Codes –denying citizenship to African Americans.              Continue reading →