HOT TAKES! - White Revenge Politics and the Fight Over Voting Rights!

0:00 I hope that you're feeling well.

0:01 Hope that you slept well.

0:02 I hope you had a good night because I need

0:03 to I need you to be wide awake for me this morning.

0:06 I have not had coffee.

0:07 I need some coffee.

0:08 I need you to be present.

0:09 I need more.

0:10 I probably need a big cup of coffee this morning.

0:12 And I need you to be with me because what I have to say today,

0:14 I have been thinking about since before I opened my eyes.

0:18 And uh I'm not going to dance around it.

0:19 I'm not going to try to soften any of it.

0:22 Um I'm going to give it to you.

0:24 I'm going to give you to you to both sides.

0:27 give you both sides because there I'm not gonna give you both

0:32 sides because there are not two sides to what I'm about to say.

0:36 I hate that like two sides.

0:37 Paul said, "Well, what about the other side?" There's no other side to this.

0:40 There's history and there is what is happening

0:42 right now and they are the same thing.

0:46 So, let me start at the beginning.

0:47 All right, just to educate some people who may not know.

0:50 Maybe there's some MAGA folks in here.

0:51 Maybe there are some Republicans.

0:52 Maybe there's some people who just don't know history

0:54 because they're trying to erase black people from history.

0:56 and from the history books.

0:58 Now, I want to start from the very beginning,

1:02 and I don't mean not just this morning's beginning, the real beginning.

1:04 After the Civil War, black people in this country did something extraordinary,

1:09 something that terrified a lot of white people.

1:12 Uh, very simply, they voted.

1:14 They held office.

1:16 They built schools.

1:17 They built businesses.

1:19 They were productive members of society.

1:21 They built communities.

1:23 And we all I'm going to tell you what happened.

1:25 And they elected black senators and black congressmen and black sheriffs,

1:28 black judges and states that had enslaved them and states that had treated

1:32 them as property and states that had said that they were not fully human.

1:38 Black people looked at all of that and said anyway, okay, we're here.

1:43 We're citizens.

1:44 We're going to participate in this democracy that claimed to be for everybody.

1:50 And then white men looked at that and they

1:53 decided they were not going to allow it.

1:56 So they rewrote the maps.

1:59 They changed the laws.

2:02 They formed the Ku Klux Clan and rode

2:04 through the night and burned and lynched and terrorized.

2:08 And when the federal government pulled its troops out of the South in 1877,

2:12 left black people without protection, they institutionalized all of it.

2:18 They called it redemption, which is one of the most dishonest

2:23 words ever used in the American political history.

2:29 Because what they were redeeming was white power.

2:33 That's it.

2:35 That's all it was.

2:36 And then came Jim Crow, pole taxes, literacy tests with no right answers.

2:46 How do you know?

2:47 How can you count bubbles?

2:48 How do you know how many jelly beans were in a jar?

2:52 Then came grandfather clauses, violence at polling places,

2:56 entire systems designed with one purpose,

2:59 and that's to take back what black people had earned

3:03 to erase black political power before it could threaten white political power.

3:08 And black people fought.

3:11 I mean, Lord, they fought.

3:13 And many of them lost their lives.

3:14 They marched.

3:15 They organized.

3:17 They were beaten on bridges.

3:18 They were bombed in churches.

3:21 They were murdered in their beds and on their porches

3:24 and in their cars and on the side of the road.

3:28 Lynchings.

3:32 And so then came the Selma marches.

3:36 Watch.

3:38 On March 7th, 1965, 600 people marched into history.

3:49 People often ask me, "WHY DO YOU COME BACK?" We come to sell to be renewed.

3:57 We come to be reminded that we must do

3:59 the work that justice and equality calls us to do.

4:04 Man, I miss John Lewis.

4:07 And in 1965, after all of that, after all of that blood and sacrifice and grief,

4:11 Lyndon Johnson finally signed the Voting Rights Act.

4:14 And people cried because it felt like finally,

4:17 finally the law was on their side.

4:18 Finally, the country was going to live up to what they said it was.

4:25 More Voting Rights Act.

4:30 The Voting Rights Act is not just a victory for black Americans.

4:34 In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., it enriches the lives of all Americans.

4:40 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a very big deal.

4:44 It transformed America, marking the end of the Jim Crow

4:47 era and effectively banning racial discrimination in elections.

4:50 When Lynden Johnson came into office, she made black civil rights a priority.

4:56 It is to give all our people the right to choose their leaders.

5:02 To deny this right, I think is to deny democracy itself.

5:08 H no one is saying that.

5:10 They're saying the exact opposite now.

5:11 That was 61 years ago.

5:14 And I am sitting here this morning telling

5:16 you that this Supreme Court just issued a ruling

5:19 that Justice Kagan said could produce the largest

5:21 reduction in minority representation since the end of reconstruction.

5:24 since the end of reconstruction, the period I just described to you,

5:28 the period where black people were stripped

5:30 of everything they had built after the Civil War.

5:35 We're not headed back there.

5:37 We are back there.

5:39 The Alabama Supreme Court just wiped out

5:41 a black congressional district 9 days before a primary.

5:47 People had already cast their absentee ballots.

5:51 They had their ballots in their hands.

5:54 And that's not the only state.

5:55 Florida already moved.

5:57 Louisiana moving now.

5:58 Virginia is lining up.

6:00 Tennessee, we told you we we the big reports last week.

6:06 They are not waiting right now.

6:09 They are not deliberating.

6:11 They saw that ruling come down and they moved like it had

6:14 they had been waiting for permission

6:17 because they had been waiting for permission.

6:20 Now, let me just say this because I need to say this and I

6:22 need to say it clearly because I'm I'm just tired right now.

6:24 I'm tired of watching journalists and commentators and politicians and pundits

6:28 step around this word like it's broken glass on the floor.

6:31 Like, oh, we can't say it.

6:33 They have to whisper it.

6:33 Like they, you know, if they say it out loud, something bad is going to happen.

6:38 Like saying it is something more dangerous than the thing itself.

6:43 What is happening to black voters in this country right now is racist.

6:48 That's the word.

6:50 Not a hot take, not a partisan talking point, not inflammatory rhetoric.

6:54 It's just racist.

6:55 The same motivation that ended reconstruction is

6:58 the motivation behind what is happening right now.

7:01 The same fear of black political power,

7:04 the same calculation that if black people vote

7:07 in their full numbers and their full strength, then certain people cannot win.

7:12 And rather than change their agenda to appeal to more people,

7:16 they change the rules to count fewer people.

7:18 They make it harder for people to have access to the voting process.

7:23 That is what this is.

7:26 That has always been what it is.

7:30 My friend Rachel Matt laid it out last week, and she was right.

7:33 This is not a series of unrelated policy decisions.

7:37 This is a coordinated 16-month campaign.

7:40 They gutted the Voting Rights Act.

7:42 They wiped out anti-discrimination protections that have

7:45 been on the books since 1965.

7:47 They are eliminating black congressional representation across the South.

7:50 They fired black officials across every federal agency.

7:53 And they rescended the executive

7:55 order banning discrimination by federal contractors,

7:58 an order that has existed since Lyndon Johnson signed it.

8:03 Lyndon Johnson.

8:08 We we've gone back past Lyndon Johnson.

8:12 And here's the one thing that you need to really hear right now.

8:16 The federal government of the United States of America

8:19 no longer explicitly prohibits its

8:21 contractors from having segregated restaurants,

8:24 segregated waiting rooms, segregated drinking fountains.

8:28 That prohibition is gone.

8:30 In 2026, in the country that put a man on the moon,

8:34 in the country that has a Martin Luther King memorial on the National Mall,

8:38 in a country that just finished celebrating its 250th anniversary while

8:43 telling itself what a great experiment in democracy it has been.

8:48 Segregated drinking fountains are not explicitly

8:51 prohibited by the federal government today.

8:54 And people will say, "Don, you are being dramatic.

8:57 You are being political.

8:58 you are race baiting.

9:00 And when I say to something,

9:01 when I say something about that, I've heard that my entire career,

9:08 I've heard that for as many as my more than 50 years on this planet.

9:15 Every time a black person names a racist thing,

9:18 somebody accuses them of making it about race

9:21 as if it was not already about race.

9:23 as if the people who drew these maps were not

9:26 thinking about race every single second they were drawing them.

9:30 The racism was there before I named it.

9:33 And naming it does not create it.

9:35 Naming it just means that we can see it clearly enough to fight it.

9:41 So in case you haven't seen me before,

9:43 maybe you don't know that I speak my mind.

9:47 I have no other choice.

9:49 I'm Don Lemon.

9:50 I've been a journalist for more than 30 years.

9:54 I've sat across from presidents and senators

9:57 and generals and dictators and I have tried

10:00 to be fair and I've tried to be balanced and I've tried to present every side.

10:04 And I'm telling you right now, there is no balance to be found here.

10:08 There is no other side of this that deserves equal time.

10:12 What is happening to black voters in this country, it is a crime.

10:17 It is deliberate.

10:18 It's documented, historically familiar attempts to erase

10:24 black political power is what it is.

10:27 I know that this is this moment right now is heavy.

10:29 What I'm saying is heavy.

10:30 I know that some mornings you just want to wake up and you

10:32 just want to have your coffee and you just want to, you know,

10:34 get have a few minutes before the world comes in.

10:37 I know all of that.

10:38 And and when I'm writing the newsletter in the morning

10:40 and I'm thinking about what I'm going to say, I'm very conscious of that.

10:42 This morning I took a long a lot longer time uh because I thought this story is

10:48 the most important story I believe in modern

10:51 history because it changes the trajectory of our country.

10:54 And so I understand all those things like people just I can't

10:57 I can't take anymore whatever you can't bury your heads in the sand.

11:01 You cannot just ignore ignore it.

11:03 I feel you though.

11:04 But I also know that people who are moving fast on these maps

11:09 and these courts and these laws that they are counting on your fatigue.

11:15 They are counting on you being tired.

11:18 They are counting on you feeling like it is too

11:20 much and there is nothing that you can do anyway,

11:23 so you may as well not pay attention or I'm just going

11:25 to this is for the other people and I'm just going to do that.

11:28 Yeah.

11:28 Is it a is it a white people problem?

11:30 Yes.

11:32 But is also a black people problem because we're the one

11:34 who's who the ones who are going to get discriminated against.

11:37 We can't just say, "Well,

11:37 white people talk to white people." Yes, that's absolutely true.

11:40 White people have to talk to white people.

11:42 But we also have to do what we have to do in order to save ourselves.

11:50 I'm not going to, you know,

11:51 if I if I'm on a sinking ship and they throw a lifeboat there,

11:53 I'm not going to say, "Well,

11:55 I'm not going to get on that boat because the captain is supposed to save me.

12:02 you better get your ass in that boat or swim.

12:05 It's sink or swim.

12:07 Nobody's coming to save us.

12:09 So, they're counting on you not paying

12:11 attention or you sort of obuscating or saying,

12:14 "Oh, this is somebody else's problem." And that's

12:17 not an accident that they're doing it.

12:19 Overwhelming people is the strategy here.

12:21 Division, of course.

12:22 Yes.

12:24 Making the news feel like a a flood

12:26 that you can't swim through is the strategy here.

12:29 They want you to give up.

12:30 They want you to stay home.

12:32 They want you to feel like like your your votes don't matter because they know

12:39 that your vote that your your actual vote

12:41 is the one thing that they cannot fully control.

12:47 So yet I'm still asking you to stay in this fight.

12:55 Not for me.

12:58 For the people who who bled on that bridge in Selma.

13:02 For the people who sat at those lunch

13:04 counters and got milkshakes poured on their heads,

13:10 hot water thrown at them, hoses, grease, all the stuff, all the things.

13:17 And they just kept they kept sitting there.

13:21 for the people who registered voters in Mississippi in the summer of 1964

13:27 knowing what could happen to them and they just did it anyway.

13:35 And and now we're so comfortable.

13:36 I can't do that.

13:38 I'm not going to mess up my Gucci bag.

13:44 I got to pay my Ben's note.

13:50 I'm talking to you.

13:51 I said it because no one is coming to save us.

13:56 We can talk about all the things that people are doing wrong.

13:58 They are doing it.

13:59 They don't care.

14:00 Yes, it this is racism.

14:02 Yes, it's white people.

14:03 Yes, it's mainly white men.

14:04 Yes, yes, yes.

14:05 But nobody's coming.

14:06 That's even more proof that nobody is coming to save us because

14:09 they don't give a But the people who did what I said,

14:15 those people did not have the option of being tired.

14:18 They didn't have the option of being comfortable.

14:20 They probably had no money in the bank.

14:23 They may not even had a car.

14:27 They barely had a house.

14:28 I'm sure.

14:31 Come on now.

14:32 For those of us who are of a certain age, we know what it was like back then.

14:35 And I don't even know what it was like back then before my parents.

14:37 And then and so on and so on.

14:42 But we don't have that option either right now.

14:45 The Alabama primary is May 19th, one week from today.

14:51 A map that was drawn to dilute your vote.

14:56 So, I'm saying show up anyway, especially anyway,

15:01 because there are certain there are a few things that I know.

15:04 I know what I know and I know what I don't know.

15:07 And this is the thing that I hold on to when the news gets this heavy.

15:12 They have tried to erase not just black political power,

15:17 but black people before over and over and over again.

15:21 And when are they going to realize they can't?

15:23 That we ain't going nowhere.

15:24 That they wouldn't have a country without us.

15:26 That they would have no culture without us.

15:29 They have tried it to do it with violence

15:31 and and with law and with courts and with maps and with terror.

15:37 And black people are still here.

15:38 We still here.

15:40 I know the correct grammars.

15:41 We're still here.

15:42 But I'm saying we still here, if you know what I'm saying.

15:45 Still voting, still running, still winning, still building.

15:51 They tried to bury us.

15:56 But they didn't know that we were seeds.

15:59 Roll it, Andy.

16:03 The March in Washington is still the largest

16:06 demonstration in DC for human rights, for civil rights.

16:14 And people found out about it back in 1963 through flyers like this one.

16:20 It's not black America faces a crisis.

16:23 It's America.

16:24 All of us are facing this crisis.

16:27 Freedom Now movement.

16:28 Hear me.

16:29 We are requesting all citizens to move into Washington to go by plane,

16:34 by car, bus, any way that you can get there.

16:37 Walk if necessary.

16:39 We are pushing for jobs, housing, desegregated schools.

16:44 This is an urgent request.

16:46 Please join.

16:47 Go to Washington.

16:50 And that is our history.

16:52 And I think right now it's got to be our future.

16:56 It's not our present.

16:57 It's got to be our future.

16:59 I'm not saying that that this is going to be

17:01 exactly like the civil rights movement or the March on Washington,

17:06 but people have been saying for years

17:09 that uh what was the thing that Carl Bernstein

17:14 used to say something about a cold something

17:17 a cold civil war or something like that.

17:20 But a civil war is happening in this country.

17:22 People have been predicting it forever.

17:23 We're this is it.

17:26 We're in it and history in this case is on our side.

17:37 So, make sure you not just wake up, but stay woke.

17:43 Thanks for watching everybody.

17:45 I appreciate you.

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18:17 All right, I'll see you next time.