JACKSON - A trip to any public library that offers a history book can establish that for more than a century, the white power structure in Mississippi found innumerable methods to discriminate against black voters.
That discrimination took the form of acts as raw and blunt as murder, terrorism, beatings, threats and economic sanctions. It also was as oblique and infuriating as poll taxes and literacy tests that required the voter to successfully ascertain the number of bubbles on a bar of soap.
In 1875, the so-called "First Mississippi Plan" to discriminate against black voters was a simple, open campaign of murder, violence, terror and fraud perpetrated in most cases by undisguised whites against the state's black registered voters.
By 1890, the "Second Mississippi Plan" took up where the first one left off. This time, white voter discrimination against blacks was written into the law in the 1890 Mississippi Constitution and state laws.
Many of the vestiges of those "Jim Crow" laws were routinely practiced in Mississippi well into my childhood in the 1960s and visible in segregated rest rooms, drinking fountains and even hospital and clinic waiting rooms.
In some sections of Mississippi, the murder, violence, terror and fraud continued into and past the 1960s. By then, the perpetrators of the violence hid behind sheets or under cover of darkness.
Against the backdrop of Mississippi's undeniable history of white voter discrimination against blacks, does one even dare ask the question: "Can blacks discriminate against white voting rights in Mississippi?"
It's a valid question, and the answer is obvious.
The "First Mississippi Plan" - brute violence and oppression - was made expressly illegal in 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
The "Second Mississippi Plan" - the writing of voter discrimination into the law - was expressly outlawed a year later. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 held that "no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any state or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
Neither of those laws declared that civil rights or voting rights were sacred for African Americans exclusively. Therefore, black citizens can under the right circumstances without question discriminate against white citizens' voting rights.
The Voting Rights Act has been used dozens, perhaps hundreds of times to protect the voting rights of black Mississippians against discrimination from whites. But in the federal courthouse in Jackson this month, U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee has been presiding over the first case in history in which the federal government has accused black Mississippi election officials of violating the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against white voters.
U.S. Justice Department attorneys have been trying to convince Lee that black Noxubee County Democratic Party leaders now in power have systematically denied the voting rights of white voters.
The feds are alleging that Noxubee County Democratic Party Chairman Ike Brown and his loyalists have rigged the voting process against white voters by manipulating voter rolls, making threats to ban some whites from voting, miscounting ballots to ensure white candidates lost and other discriminatory acts.
Brown has denied all allegations, accusing the white minority in Noxubee County of sour grapes after years of white discrimination against black voters there.
There is no jury. Lee will decide this historic case. The nation will watch the outcome. But if the government proves voter discrimination by Brown, the outcome of the case shouldn't be in doubt.
Discrimination is discrimination - and it's wrong in whatever color it comes. That's the law.
