An
Editorial Series
April 1, 2002
A long, long time ago,
most of the people in Alabama, blacks and whites, went to the polls
to
disenfranchise themselves.
They had been asked to ratify the 1901 Constitution,
a document drawn up by south Alabama landed gentry and north Alabama
industrialists. The times conspired with the clever authors of that
constitution to convince Alabamians of the day that the new document
would mark the path for a better tomorrow. It was to be a tool to
allow the state to claw its way out from
under the debris of war and Reconstruction and the boot of poverty.
Instead, the 1901 Constitution came to serve as a legal
foundation that ensured the continued enrichment and power of the
ones who wrote it, while banishing turn-of-the century Alabama to
obscurity. Although many of the sins of 1901, such as the poll tax,
have been struck down, the transgression, the bad joke of 100 years
ago, continues today. The players might be different — Black
Belt farmers and railroad lawyers have moved aside to make room for
a gaggle of powerful lobbyists — but the issues remain the same.
Today lobbyists still fight to keep power vested under the roof of
the state Legislature in Montgomery. It is a place where influence
is easily exerted and exemptions, allowances and special treatments
are given in return. It is a symbiotic relationship that keeps the
well-off fed and powerful and everyone else in a fit of eternal
stagnation.
The gaping wound on the state that is the 1901 Constitution
bleeds our Alabama of jobs, people and reputation and is a teeming
home to a festering of inadequate public education, poor government
and non-existent land-use planning.
It is an embarrassment. And it must, for the sake of
a better Alabama, a better future for all of us, be changed.
And that chance for change awaits us.
The shameful defeat by the state House on March 21 of
a measure allowing the people to have a say on the question of a convention
to rewrite the 1901 document, is only the beginning of the battle
to build a better Alabama. In the coming months, office seekers from
the governor down to House members will have to state their positions
on the question. Either they are with the growing grass-roots movement
for constitutional reform or they are allies of the defenders of a
broken document, a broken philosophy and a broken way of governing
that pays heed to every want of lobbyists and panders to every notion
of the special interests while relegating the needs of Alabama and
her people to the rear.
It is time for a new constitution.
Over the next week, The Star’s editorial page will
tell a story of Alabama through the voices of the people in Calhoun
County who feel the burden of the state’s fundamental legal document
pressing down on them every day of their lives. Their often-solitary
struggles, however, are not private but are shared by every person
in this state. These residents show how our constitution is a manacle
that handicaps our state in those visible ways that touch lives, and
from them all you will see how that travesty of the past also heaps
intangible burdens of bad reputation and backward image upon us.
See
for yourself how the 1901 Constitution allowed an industrial-size
hog slaughterhouse to move in next to a residential subdivision in
north Calhoun County. See how it permits cell phone towers to mar
the landscape of our pristine
county. Learn how it keeps our roads in a state of perpetual deterioration,
how it lessens our property values, how it starves out our public
school system and how it places a heavier tax burden on the middle-
and lower-income groups.
More specifically, it has made the lives of the people
of Spring Brook subdivision near Alexandria prisoners in their own
homes, the victims of a constant barrage of the sounds of squealing
dying hogs and the horrid odor that settles like a wet blanket over
the neat colorful homes on any given day.
It keeps Principal Sarah McClure of Alexandria Elementary
from giving her students better facilities, a better curriculum, language
courses, music courses, a more challenging, more rewarding education.
It keeps Calhoun County Commissioner Eli Henderson from
paving more than a few of the 318 miles in his district each year,
leaving the rest to buckle and erode.
It forces Judy Harrington, mother of four, to pay thousands
of dollars in taxes each year, making it that much more difficult
for her to provide a better life for her family.
See how we might find our way to meaningful constitutional
reform and, once we get there, how it can result in enormous payoffs,
tangible and intangible.
We seek a new document because we want better schools,
a fairer tax base and a litany of other changes, but we also want
it because it could bring Alabama a certain amount of political maturity
by energizing civil society and ushering in a populace and political
leadership that is more aware and concerned about the future of this
state.
The powerful of generations ago saddled Alabama with
this millstone that has taken us straight to the bottom of the pond.
Now it is up to us, the people of Alabama, the people of Calhoun County,
to demand that the state Legislature give Alabamians the right to
vote on the question of a constitutional convention. This kind of
radical change, we all know by now, will not willingly flow from the
state Legislature. That body has now been given 100 years to make
its move. Now it is our turn. If that sounds like a challenge, it
is. For this is a deep wrong that needs righting, and the people of
Calhoun County can play an almost spiritual role in bringing about
a new constitution. In a way, our county carries an extra burden because
of the constitution. The main perpetrator was Anniston railroad attorney
John Knox, the president of the 1901 Constitutional Convention.
Consider the poetic justice of Calhoun County’s
populace leading the charge to fix what John Knox left so badly broken.
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