By Michael Tyler, EJS Poet-in-Residence
I consider myself to be an individual who respects history and who has, throughout the entirety of my life, maintained a fascination and curiosity for it. I also task myself with an obligation and accountability to continue learning it.
I have also long felt it to be my personal and patriotic duty to call upon the teachings, lessons, and truths of history to confront the malignant plots and mendacious voices of those who would distort, deconstruct and deny history for the most anti-democratic of intentions. I don’t live with the assumption or arrogance that what I assemble as thought in my head, and interpret as words on a page are worthy for anyone to read or consider. But I do live with the self-regard that all citizens have an equal value and right to contribute their thoughts and words, to the discourse of the nation.
It is to that end, I find that I cannot simply dismiss and shun the opinion expressed by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in the aftermath of the Court’s ruling on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, which effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In his opinion, Thomas stated:
“This Court should have never interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups an entitlement to roughly proportional representation.”
I’ll leave it for others more intelligent, more learned and more versed in constitutional law to apply greater scrutiny to Thomas’s opinion than I’m willing to trust myself capable of doing. Nonetheless, I do have enough understanding of words to make “an average citizen” judgment.
First, I must begin with something I rarely do, when expressing an opinion about an opinion from the Court, and that is to state an opinion about the Justice who made it. I have not lived long enough or read enough to make a categorical statement about much of human conduct, but I have lived long enough and read enough to come to some reliable conclusions, given the repetition of our patterns of behavior.
While there no doubt have been others who have been more egregious, duplicitous, traitorous and self-deceived in their attitudes and actions, I will stand by stating that perhaps there has never been, in our nation’s history, a Black person more imperiled by moral depravity, more immasked by ethical fraudulence, more impaired by self-loathing and more impassioned by tribal treason, who has occupied a higher position of influence and impact than Justice Thomas. His appointment to and presence on the bench has proven to be one of the greatest insults made against his own lineage, heritage and culture, as well as all others distinguished by the history of being Black in America, and for the righteous causes of equal justice and equitable representation in this country. Even more, as a “Justice” who swore to uphold the Constitution equally and fairly, on behalf of all Americans, as did Justice Thurgood Marshall, Thomas’s presence on the bench is a testament to how deceitful and erroneous the judgment of men can be, when making nominations, consent and appointments to the Court.
Secondly, a focus on “entitlement”. A document titled, Concessions and Agreements of West New Jersey, dated March 13, 1677, served as a precursor to the wording of the Declaration of Independence. It stated:
That no Proprietor, freeholder or inhabitant of the said Province of West New Jersey, shall be deprived or condemned of life, limb, liberty, estate, property or any ways hurt in his or their privileges, freedoms or franchises.
Decades later, that wording was reconstituted to say what is found in paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
An “unalienable right” is a fundamental and essential entitlement that is the natural and inherent endowment of every human being, by virtue of existence. No other qualification or identification is needed. Though not always justly upheld, this has been a recognized, stated and self-evident truth since the intention to manifest a destiny was made by the Europeans who came to these shores. Though other rights and entitlements can be drafted and decreed as law, they should all be reaped as the fruit of what has been sown and rooted by what it immutably and intrinsically means to be human.
The word “franchises”, in the West New Jersey document, relates directly to the right, not privilege, to vote, that is as unalienable as any other right, particularly in a representative form of government. The word “disenfranchise” means to coerce, deprive and deny a person or any group of people of their legal right to vote and have civic participation with their government. It is that word, “franchises” that is carried over in inference and intent into the wording of the Declaration of Independence. It is this essential entitlement that was codified into the laws of the Constitution as the Fifteenth Amendment (1870), which in part states:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Despite the imperfections of its draft and application, most notably the exclusion of women and the continued denial of Black people to vote, the right to vote has been constitutionally determined as being one that is undeniable. The constitutional reinforcement of this came later (1920) in the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibits the government from denying anyone the right to vote based upon their sex. Even though the 15th Amendment mentions “race, “color” and “previous condition of servitude” (slavery), the instruction of the law was never justly followed and enforced, and in fact was pecked to death by Jim Crow dictates and intimidation all across the country, not just the South. This is exactly why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was drafted and enacted, to fix protections into law and remedy the malignant injustice that continued to deny and abridge the right to vote by Black Americans — a denial and abridgement that has been renewed with judicial disdain, 156 years after the Constitution was amended to rectify it.
There could have been no greater disingenuous, deplorable and despicable statement offered in explanation of the Supreme Court’s decision to disembowel the Voting Rights Act than what was offered by Justice Thomas. This is a self-evident truth now being processed by millions across the country.
A look through history reveals other self-evident truths germane to this decision. In the history of the United states, there has never been a minority group of people who have been violated, denigrated, denied and disenfranchised that did not receive greater citizenship and enfranchisement recognition in law — without a minority group of legislators from the majority group of people in this country responsible for those injustices. This is true of the Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and Ben Wade (37th-40th Congresses), men who advocated for the abolishment of slavery, full civil rights for Black Americans and the exacting measures of redress through the Reconstruction of the South. There were no Black members of Congress when the 13th Amendment was passed.
Comparatively, there was only one woman in Congress in 1919, Jeanette Rankin, a Republican Representative from Montana, when the 19th Amendment was passed. White people and men were needed to abolish slavery for Black people and enact suffrage for women. This yields the self-evident truth that it takes the leadership and courage of those guided by principle, integrity and due process to insist that our democratic ideals are realized for everyone — attributes Justice Thomas is void of.
Similarly, during the Civil War, thousands of runaway slaves fled north to fight for the Union. The Army wasn’t integrated (1792 law prohibited Black soldiers). The officers didn’t know what to do with the influx. Many slaves were returned in accordance to the Fugitive Slave Act. Others were only considered for menial tasks and manual labor and were subjected to treatment not unlike what they had escaped. But in 1861, three runaways, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend escaped to Fort Monroe in Virginia. Major General Benjamin Butler refused to return or send them away, believing they had a right to fight for the freedom they escaped slavery to have. By invoking the “contraband of war” policy, Butler was able to classify the men as “protected property”, which meant they didn’t have to be returned. This led to thousands more going to Fort Monroe, nicknamed “Freedom’s Fortress”, and the eventual formation of the United States Colored Troops by 1863. It was a self-evident truth acknowledged by Butler that these determined people, willing to fight for a freedom and a right that was promised to them by the Constitution, should be given that chance — a chance Justice Thomas would have certainly denied them.
This was again realized by the bi-partisan efforts of Mike Mansfield, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader from Montana, and Everett Dirksen, the Republican Senate Minority Leader from Illinois, who worked closely to build the bipartisan coalition that overcame the filibusters by southern Democrats, in order to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those men, as well as the inevitable majority of representatives and senators of the 89th Congress, acknowledged, affirmed and upheld the unalienable right — the essential entitlement of voting granted by virtue of being human that Justice Thomas opposes.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, wrote an opinion in 1964, for Reynolds v. Sims, a case that was a run up to the landmark legislation of 1965. In it, he emphasized the essential and fundamental entitlement of enfranchisement:
“The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government…Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized.”
It was this opinion, and the efforts of Mansfield and Everett — that enabled Justice Thomas, who was seventeen in 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed, to vote freely in his first election and in every election since.
It remains a self-evident truth that the provisions in Article III of the Constitution, used by Stevens, Sumner and Wade to advance passage of the 13th Amendment and to push forth the effort for Reconstruction, are still available, even if Democratic legislators act with cowardice that they do not. It remains a self-evident truth that there is a minority of the majority willing to battle against the anti-democratic aspirations of the Administration and some state legislatures, in order to preserve the hard fought for gains of the Civil Rights Movement, and to forge the remaking of the nation from the ideals that have been waiting to be used at the foundry of our intentions. It remains a self-evident truth that people in power will seek to most oppress those people who embody the power of self-determination they most fear. And it remains a self-evident truth that oppressed people will never tire in their aim to claim the unalienable rights that are fundamental and essential entitlements, the natural and inherent endowments of every human being, by virtue of existence, our existence — regardless of what Justice Thomas opines.