Story of a voting rights song

This is an account of a song, both of its textual references and the political contexts for them.

Much of the effort of the mid-1960s civil rights movement, especially in the deep south, was focused on voting power, through voter registration work and facilitation of real use of the ballot by voters and uppity black candidates. Those years were politically formative for me. Decades after my time in South Carolina I wrote a choral song for my choir in California, which Athens’ feminist choir, Calliope, also performed just last spring. It seemed timely, because “more than half a century later, note, they’re taking back the right to vote.” 

Video provided by Birch Moonwoman; song performed by Calliope.

“Are You There” first describes the struggle of the 1960s in the Jim Crow south and then the current need to resist voter suppression actions across our country. The message is that the suppressors have never quit; therefore, it is up to us to continue the fight the grand-elders began for one-person-one-vote, so that each vote is counted and counts for something. The song’s first chorus begins with “Were you there?”, evoking the early struggle, and returns later with “Are you there?” referring to today’s challenges. It exhorts the “grandchild of grandmother who/ walked that road a mile or two, / you can make a change in the code.” 

The choruses include words and tune snippets from old civil rights songs, which themselves derive from church music: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us round,” and “Keep your eyes on the prize.” Even as I wove those in, I was aware they might be badly out of touch with current political sensibilities. Still, there is a trail from the movement of the 1960s to our present political challenge; we do need not to get turned around, we do need to remind ourselves to keep our eyes on the prize. Indeed, as in the 1960s, we are in a strange time, in some partly progressive but, importantly, in large part reactionary.  The then and the now are twined together in an encompassing reality.

The song’s second stanza mentions assaults on voting power now: the gutting of the Voting Rights Protection Act, which has encouraged difficult enfranchisement tests and reductions in opportunities to vote; and both gerrymandering and the corruption of election boards.  

The lyrics do not cover all the obstructions and threats to the power of the ballot. Although poll taxes and literacy tests are things of the past — ended in the 1960s — anti-democracy forces are using other weapons. Ohio is quite a voter suppression state, one of 12 states with new, burdensome requirements for exercising the right to vote. For one thing, many formerly registered Ohio voters need to re-register, because those who have not voted within the last four years have been purged from the rolls. Check your registration at ohiosos.gov.

Since April 2023 a voter suppression law (HB 458) has tightened ID requirements, shortened voting deadlines, cut back on drop boxes (only one box per county now), and imposed penalties for absentee ballot errors. The law had also discriminated against disabled voters by disallowing them help except from a small class of persons. This violates both the Voting Rights Protection Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.  The ACLU succeeded in mitigating the restriction.   

The country is in similar trouble. Every district in SE Ohio is gerrymandered, but while our state is one of the worst, outcomes across the country are affected by unfair districting. Also, the nation must now face both the threat that untrustworthy election boards in swing states will refuse to certify results and, given the events of January 6, that angry losers will again attempt to steal the election violently at the beginning of the new year. Either of these would affect not only the Presidential outcome but results all down the ballot in each targeted state. “Gerrymandered states erupt,/ election boards become corrupt.”

There is another factor. Over the past eight years the norms for political discourse have changed alarmingly. Lying, committing fraud, and bullying opponents have been such repeated behaviors, usually without consequence, that they have become regularized. We simply expect them. Expectation encourages acceptance. Such capitulation would allow suppressors to limit the 2024 vote and refuse the true results.  

These current threats to voting rights in Ohio and throughout the country are the context for the message of “Are You There?” Progressive cultural and legal changes over the past 65 years or so do not mean that old attitudes and purposes have disappeared. We see them resurgent. In voting and otherwise promoting the peoples’ voting power, we may win or lose or something in between. If we fall into inaction, we have already lost. The coda of the song is a reprise of a chorus portion: “Ain’t nobody gonna turn/ us around with all we’ve learned.”