Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. “Voter Voices” is a series of people sharing their thoughts on voting rights, the state’s history of voter suppression and the new gerrymandering push embroiling Mississippi, the South and the nation after the r ecent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Louisiana case gutted the federal Voting Rights Act’s requirements for majority Black districts. One of the first things Ed Godfrey was taught when he came to Mississippi in the 1960s to help register voters was to sleep with his feet towards the outside wall of a house so that if a bomb went off it would take out his feet and not his head.  It took 30-40 years before he was able to sleep with his head against an outside wall. “It was a lot of stress. But at the same time, you felt like you’re doing something. I’ve never felt in my life, since then, that I’ve done as important a thing. It’s something that needed to be done,” Godfrey, who now lives in the Northeast, said of the eight months he spent in Mississippi with the National Council of Churches. As a college student in Wisconsin, Godfrey was inspired to come to Mississippi by the marches from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. A 1960s flyer encourages Black Mississippi farmers to vote in their local Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service elections. Credit: Ed Godfrey One of Godfrey’s main projects was trying to get Black farmers elected to their local Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service committees. The service was a federal program with committees that were in charge of surveying cotton fields in their areas and telling farmers how many acres of cotton they could plant.  According to Godfrey, white farmers were often given a higher allotment than Black farmers.  “It really limited their ability to make a living on their land,” Godfrey said. But with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, organizers saw an opportunity to increase Black participation and representation. Godfrey worked alongside civil rights activist Benjamin Brown to campaign for Black candidates. But they were ultimately unsuccessful. Almost 10 years later in 1976, there were only three Black members out of over 900 members statewide. “What the white power structure did was they ran an opposing group of Black farmers and sharecroppers who just happened to be deeply in debt to some of the large white farmers. And so they split the Black vote and eventually we did not get anyone on the board,” Godfrey said. Godfrey sees the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana vs. Callais that weakened the Voting Rights Act and plans for redistricting as efforts to make sure less people are represented in government. “They’re trying to bring it back now. You know, to my mind it’s so discouraging to see the whole thing all over again,” Godfrey said. ...read more read less