Much like the exemplary work of the US House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, Smiths indictment doesnt focus on the central role race played in Trumps attempted coup. In fact, it doesnt mention race at all.

But its all there, between the lines of Count Four, charging Trump with violating Title 18, Section 214 of the US Code by denying Americans the right to vote, and to have ones vote counted.

Get Mira! by Marcela Garca

A bilingual view into politics, policy, people, pop culture framed through the immigrant experience and maybe a pooch or two.

That statute dates back to the Reconstruction Era and was designed to criminalize the reign of violent terror that the Ku Klux Klan and others unleashed on Black Americans after the Civil War. The terror campaign was an effort to keep them from voting, working, being educated, or simply living in a way that represented the freedom that emancipation promised.

And when it comes to the antidemocratic scheme Trump stands accused of leading, this law, and all the history that comes with it, fits the facts to a tee even if Smith didnt spell it out.

I fear that the convenient, easiest, most straightforward legal argument is also somewhat of a whitewash, Georgia State College of Law professor Anthony Michael Kreis told me. I see what Donald Trump was doing, which was a pattern of seeing Black voting power as inherently fraudulent and tying that to the identity of the country and the future of the country.

Indeed, it wasnt just hooded hate groups that rebelled against the postbellum freedoms granted to Black Americans. The so-called Redeemers of the South, comprised of wealthy businessmen, farmers, and landowners, formed a political movement to protect white supremacy in America and all the political power it afforded them. They, too, thought they were making America great again.

Fast-forward to Trumps 21th century, where he openly campaigned on a hateful platform of banning Muslims from the country and labeling Mexican immigrants as criminals, drug dealers, rapists. As president, he defended those who tried to start a race war in Charlottesville, Va., as very fine people.

The long list of Trumps racist dog whistles or bullhorns, really goes on. But he clearly knew who made up a key part of his base of support. And Trump knew just who he could count on when the time came for him to turn his call to stand back and stand by into Be there, will be wild! Smith may not have charged Trump as part of the seditious conspiracy that resulted in prison sentences for leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, militia groups whose foundations date back to the 19th-century Klan, but their plot could not have happened without Trumps command.

Its no accident that many in the mob that descended on Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and violently stormed the Capitol carried Confederate flags or donned white nationalist insignia and slogans along with their red MAGA hats. The hand gestures of some rioters certainly meant something other than OK.

Its no mere coincidence that the places Trump falsely and baselessly claimed to be bastions of voter fraud included Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta cities with large Black voting blocs in swing states. The images of the crowd of white Trump supporters surrounding a vote-counting center on Election Day in my hometown of Detroit, then the Blackest city in America, shouting Stop the count! nearly stopped my heart. It was Jim Crows modern resurrection, everything my grandparents sought to escape when they left the South for Michigan generations ago.

And it was just what Congress sought to stop during the Reconstruction Era.

Unfortunately, lawmakers didnt go far enough. Originally the statute Trump was charged with included a disqualification clause that would have prohibited anyone convicted from holding office, but that provision was scrapped in the amendment stage as overly punitive. That means Trump, despite it all, will be on primary ballots.

So its not just the jurors who will be seated at his trials who have an important role to play. Its also each and every voting American who will render their judgment on Trump at their polling places next year. Every voter should read every word of that indictment and cast their ballots in judgment of Trump with open eyes not just on the future but on the history we must never forget.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at kimberly.atkinsstohr@globe.com. Follow her @KimberlyEAtkins.

See original here:

Trump indictment doesn't mention race, but it's all there - The Boston Globe