August 20, 2020 marked the 57th Anniversary of the establishment of the Iowa City Human Relations Commission, now known as the Iowa City Human Rights Commission.

The seven original members appointed were: Helen Lemme, Irene Kenney, Richard Sidwell, S. Strauss, Emit Trott, Rev. Father Lawrence Soem, and Moni Costantino. The Commission was established to address the prevalent housing discrimination against African Americans. To learn more on racial discrimination in the area of housing here in Iowa City from 1900 to 1960, visit our website.

On July 29, 2020, the President tweeted that people living in suburbs “will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low-income housing built in your neighborhood.” What does this mean?

It refers to a provision of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) that is unique in civil rights law. Most civil rights laws are reactive—imposing sanctions meant to redress injustices once the harm has already occurred. The FHA is unique in that it contains a proactive provision, meant to remedy and prevent injustice. This provision requires an entity receiving Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds to “affirmatively further fair housing.” Recognizing that exclusionary covenants, redlining, unfair zoning, and other practices have been used as tools of segregation, the FHA includes a mandate to proactively implement fair housing practices.

There was a flaw in the FHA, however, in that it failed to include enforcement and oversight provisions for affirmatively furthering fair housing. Congress intended HUD funds to be used to expand housing choices. Instead, many local governments and housing authorities accepted HUD funds without ensuring they were actually used to implement fair housing. In 2015, HUD issued new regulations holding entities receiving HUD funds accountable for their use. These regulations imposed reporting requirements and formulated a process designed to demonstrate progress on reducing discriminatory housing practices. HUD required entities receiving funds to submit extensive reports called “Assessments of Fair Housing.” HUD also provided analytical and mapping tools to help entities implement programs and report on their progress. This ensured that HUD funds were used for the purpose intended—affirmatively furthering fair housing.

However, on January 5, 2018, HUD effectively suspended implementation of the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” rule and issued a new rule in July 2020. The new rule requires only that an entity receiving HUD funds certify that it has taken “any action that is rationally related to promoting one or more attributes of fair housing.” Under this rule, the extensive reporting process is suspended, and “any action” that is “rationally related” to promoting fair housing is enough to justify receipt of HUD funds. Therefore, while the FHA still contains the requirement to affirmatively further fair housing, oversight has been vastly reduced. Taken to the extreme, for example, an entity receiving HUD funds could simply hang posters in its office encouraging fair housing practices and this would be an “action that is rationally related to promoting … fair housing.”

The rule is certain to be challenged by civil rights groups, but unless litigation is successful, the mandate to affirmatively further fair housing has been gutted. On a positive note, however, the City of Iowa City will continue to implement its plans to affirmatively further fair housing, regardless of the rule change.

On August 26, 1920, Congress certified the 19th Amendment, allowing women the right to vote nationwide. (Tennessee, the necessary 36^th state needed for national certification, ratified the Amendment on August 18, 1920, which is often also used as the anniversary date. Iowa was the tenth state to ratify the Amendment, on July 2, 1919, less than a month after it was proposed.) The amendment was a great victory for 26 million women who gained the right to vote in time for the 1920 Presidential election. But the story of women’s right to vote extends far beyond 1920, in both directions.

The first state to allow women partial voting rights was Kentucky, where widows and unmarried women who owned property subject to taxation for school purposes were allowed to vote in elections relating to schools as of 1838. As the fight for women’s suffrage proceeded, this would become a recurring theme. Schools were seen as the province of women (unlike universities, which were a male realm), as teachers were almost exclusively female, and the governance of children was seen as in women’s domain.

By 1888, 16 states allowed women to vote in elections related to schools, although a few states limited this right in some way. Kentucky kept its restrictions. In Michigan, only “taxpaying” women were allowed to vote; in Mississippi, only women who were ‘heads of households” had the right. By this time, however, inroads into full suffrage were being made. Kansas allowed women to vote in all municipal elections, school related or not. Wyoming had become the first state to allow unrestricted voting rights to women in 1869. By 1918, 19 states already allowed women full voting rights, and an additional 16 allowed some form of voting rights, most concerning school or municipal elections. Therefore, many women were allowed to vote prior to gaining the national right.

The University of Washington has compiled a fascinating timeline of state-by-state women’s voting rights featuring interactive maps, available here.

For many years after the 19th Amendment was passed, however, women did still struggle to vote.

Certain groups of women were also more adversely affected than others. Black women, especially Southern Black women, were prevented from voting by fraud, intimidation, poll taxes, threats, and outright violence. In 1926, a group of women attempting to register to vote in Birmingham, Alabama, were beaten by registration officials. Native American, Latina, and Asian women faced similar barriers to voting.

Only when activists in the 1950’s and 60’s began to frame voting rights as integral to the civil rights movement were legal barriers such as poll taxes and literacy tests eliminated with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting. Even today, closing of poll stations in majority-minority neighborhoods, restriction of voting hours to those when most working people cannot attend, and other tactics are used to attempt to limit voting rights. The Equity and Human Rights Office strongly encourages everyone who is eligible to vote to exercise this important right.

While women had to wait for the 19^th Amendment, Black men were granted the right to vote with the 15th Amendment, which is 150 years old this year, having been passed on February 3, 1870. The Amendment prohibits the federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of that person’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and was the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments passed after the conclusion of the Civil War. Just as with women’s suffrage, however, the story did not end there.

Black men were subject to the same tactics used on women, often much more brutally enforced. Women were seen as the “fairer sex” and there were at least some societal reservations regarding violence against them. This was not the case with Black men. Unlike the cases regarding women’s right to vote, lawsuits designed to disenfranchise Black men were often successful, leading to a series of late-nineteenth-century Supreme Court decisions that interpreted the Amendment narrowly, effectively limiting their voting rights. States, especially Southern ones, also raised barriers to Black men’s voting in the form of poll taxes, residency requirements, literacy tests, and violence.

The literacy tests were especially discriminatory, either containing questions whose answers could be interpreted differently depending on whether the registration agent wished the person taking the test to pass or not, or demanding specific answers to such arcane questions as “what are the names of the Federal District Court Judges in [this state]?” Try one online yourself.

An additional tactic used to suppress Black men’s votes was the “white primary.” Since the Amendment prohibited denying voting rights in federal and state elections, states simply allowed political parties to declare their own rules for primaries, giving parties the power to restrict voting in them. Not only Black, but all minority citizens were disenfranchised by all-white primary voting. As with women, Black men had to wait for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for blatantly discriminatory practices to be outlawed, and they still suffer from the covert tactics described above as well. The right to vote is hard-won—be sure to make yours count!

Race in The Heartland is a regional conference that will cover issues across the state as it relates to Race and Equity. It will include topics on Education, Housing, Criminal Justice, and Workplace.

This event will cater to all levels of a business or organization, from the CEO/Director to an entry level position. The conference will equip everyone with the skills in order for businesses/organizations to not only identify inequities, but to understand practical ways in which implementations can be made. Professional and experienced speakers will be sure to impress.

All attendees will receive a link to the documentary "Emanuel" which is based on the Dylann Roof shooting at Emanuel Church. Rose Simmons (daughter of one of the victims) will be speaking on the second day of the conference and the session will be a conversation based on the documentary between her and the audience.

Please spread the word throughout your contacts to help this event grow. Visit the conference's Eventbrite page to buy tickets and register. For up-to-date information, follow on facebook at www.facebook.com/raceintheheartland.

The Iowa City Human Rights Commission is seeking applicants to fill an unexpired term plus a three-year term upon appointment, term ending December 31, 2023. Service is on a volunteer basis and the group meets monthly.

Duties of the Commission involve educating the public on civil and human rights, including planning programs and activities to eliminate unlawful discrimination. The Commission also makes recommendations to the City Council for Social Justice and Racial Equity Grant funding, as well as for additional local legislation as it relates to discrimination.

Applicants must be at least 18 years of age and reside in Iowa City. Applications are available online, or in the City Clerk’s Office at City Hall, 410 E. Washington St.

Completed applications are due to the City Clerk by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020.

State law requires that most boards and commissions be gender-balanced.

For questions, contact Stefanie Bowers at 319-356-5022 or email stefanie-bowers@iowa-city.org.

Mr. Gammage, a Black businessman, was driving his cousin’s Jaguar through the suburbs of Philadelphia when he was stopped for an expired registration. In an eerie parallel to Mr. George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis 25 years later, Mr. Gammage died of suffocation during that traffic stop, as three officers claimed he was resisting arrest and held him down on the street until his life ended. Mr. Gammage’s death led to the first consent decree in the nation.

What is a consent decree? Strangely, consent decrees are authorized by the same Clinton-era crime law that has become notorious for leading to mass incarceration. The Clinton crime “reform” law included mandatory sentencing, racist divisions in crime classification (such as classifying the crack form of cocaine at a higher level than the powder form), and other provisions that led to the mass incarceration Michelle Alexander has labelled “the new Jim Crow.” 

But the consent decree is one positive aspect of the 1994 crime law. Section 14141 allows the attorney general and Department of Justice to investigate state and local law enforcement agencies for patterns or practices of abuse, and to sue to eliminate unconstitutional conduct, such as racial profiling and excessive force, by law enforcement officers.

After Mr. Gammage’s killing, the Justice Department (DOJ) threatened to sue the City of Philadelphia if it did not reform the culture of its police department. Instead of a lawsuit, the City and the DOJ entered into a consent decree, which is equivalent to a legal settlement with active oversight. When a local agency enters into a consent decree, federal oversight ensures that the provisions agreed to are actively pursued.

These provisions typically include changing both policies and practices to ensure that misconduct, profiling, excessive force, and a discriminatory culture are reduced and, ideally, eliminated. Training usually includes de-escalation tactics, use of reason and critical thinking to assess situations and threat levels, better understanding of power relationships, and respect for human life.

Consent decrees usually include community input and a community-policing model. While they are not perfect, Vanita Gupta, Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under President Obama, called them “the best thing that exists,” and noted “there is no perfect mechanism for the kind of change that’s required.”

Currently, however, the consent decree has been hobbled. Former Attorney General Sessions issued a memo in 2018 strictly limiting the use of consent decrees. Presently, top administration officials must sign off on every decree, there are new limits on their scope and duration, and there must be evidence of abuses beyond unconstitutional acts. While existing consent decrees are still operating, no new ones have been implemented since the Sessions memo.

Police union officials argue consent decrees are not necessary, pointing to cities such as Cincinnati, which reformed its own police department without federal oversight. However, absent federal oversight, cities, counties, and states that are not self-motivated to change have no incentive to do so.

Therefore, the consent decree is an important tool of reform that is currently not being utilized to the extent it could be. It is hoped that in the future, the Sessions memo will be withdrawn and the DOJ will resume utilizing consent decrees as a mechanism for police reform. An expired license plate should never lead to death. Learn more about the life and murder of Jonny Gammage online.

Is your business ready to transform the conversation? Join us for Implicit Bias Zoom training from 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020.

The rapidly changing demographics of the United States and the changing demographics taking place in our respective communities requires us to be proactive in facilitating respectful conversations that will challenge us to examine our own implicit biases, cultural biases, and stereotypes.

There is increasingly overwhelming scientific evidence for the effect of implicit bias on all aspects of life and human interactions. While at times our own preconceived notions of the “other” may create problems, there are things that can be done to reduce this as a risk. Education and awareness are the first steps in that process.

This workshop will utilize a range of Power Point slides, short videos, a conceptual framework, and a personal challenge activity aimed to empower participants with the ongoing education and awareness required to build capacity in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Facilitated by Dr. Rich Salas and implicit bias expert attorney Tom Newkirk, workshop attendees will be engaged in discussions that focus on how they can improve the delivery of culturally responsive communication.   

Training objectives

1. Gain a better understanding of the dangers of forming stereotypes and how our biases may affect communication, judgement, relationships, and overall interactions with people.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the Intercultural Awareness Stretch model.
3. Discuss “Culture.” What is it?  How does it manifest itself in our personal and professional lives?
4. Engage participants in a 21 Day Personal Challenge activity.
5. Provide a safe forum to be engaged in dialogue and learn from one another.

Subscribe to get Equity and Human Rights emails to receive information on how to register. Registration is capped at 150 participants.

For detailed information on current trainings, initiatives, or programs, visit icgov.org/SJREinitiatives, and scroll to Social Justice and Racial Equity Quarterly Updates.

Subscribe to this newsletter and other City news and information at icgov.org/subscribe. Thanks, and welcome!

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