Georgia Is Ground Zero for the GOP’s Jim Crow Renaissance
Black voters took control of the state in the recent Senate elections. Now the backlash has arrived.
A couple of months ago, I wrote an article called “Trump’s War on Black Voters Is Far From Over.” Donald Trump had just lost the presidential election largely due to Black folks organizing in Georgia, and we were weeks away from Democrats regaining Senate control, thanks again to those same Black voters organizing to get Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected. In that article, I said that “anytime Black people utilize their voices to make seismic electoral shifts, a backlash ensues, whether that’s through changing laws or extrajudicial violence.” The Georgia GOP and the people who follow them have proven that to be true, rushing to bring Jim Crow back as fast and ruthlessly as possible.
At the very top are the Republicans in the Georgia General Assembly, who are trying to push through the most restrictive voter suppression laws in the country. House Bill 531 and Senate Bill 241, both introduced in the past two weeks, would:
- Restrict the Sundays where people could participate in early voting — a direct attack on Black churches that hold “souls to the polls” events.
- Limit the amount of time people have to…
