Alabama voters approved a measure Tuesday that allows lawmakers to remove racist language in the state constitution — words written during the Jim Crow era to uphold white supremacy.
The constitutional rewrite won’t be completed until at least 2022, when the updated document will be presented to voters again for final approval, according to several news sources.
Although segregation and racist policies have long been outlawed, the offensive phrases of the period have remained on the books for nearly 120 years, after first being adopted in 1901.
And past efforts to strip Alabama state law of racist ideology have failed.
In 2004, conservatives helped kill a move to clean up the constitution by arguing the move could lead to increases in school taxes, according to previous reporting by The Associated Press. Eight years later, education groups and others opposed a similar measure because it retained segregation-era language that denied the constitutional right to education in Alabama.
The language that would be stripped from the document in 2020 ranges from sections that ban mixed-race marriages, allows poll taxes, and mandates school segregation.
The changes would also remove duplicate sections from the heavily-amended document and put related items all in one section, according to reports.
This year’s amendment proposal is among six on the ballot and would open the way for a deeply reworded state constitution, but one that maintains the document’s basic tenets and provisions.
Known as Amendment 4, the bill would “authorize the Legislature to recompile the Alabama Constitution and submit it during the 2022 Regular Session, and provide a process for its ratification by the voters of this state,” according to reports citing the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office.
If approved, state legislators would carefully draft a new constitution that removes racist language and language that is repeated or that no longer applies in modern times.
Even then, the updated constitution would not become law until a majority of voters approve the constitutional amendment a second time.
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