“Keep on keeping on”: The path forward

At the very end of the interview, we asked our general housekeeping question, “Is there anything you want to say that you didn’t get an opportunity to?” to which Justice Frye replied by saying:

Well, don’t give up when you are trying to do the right thing. Just keep on keeping on.”

This last quote puts the entire interview into perspective. Justice Frye was adamant in highlighting the progress that has been made in terms of voting rights in North Carolina. While he acknowledges that it is easy to be pessimistic when there are so many voting restrictions being imposed, he reminded us that we are at a much better place today than we he registered to vote in 1956.

At the time of the interview, the voter restrictions were being evaluated by a North Carolina court. The court has since ruled that the voter restrictions will be upheld. When asked if he worried that people would simply accept the restrictions if the court deemed them acceptable, Frye responded with an optimistic answer:

No, I don’t worry about that. I think that we are a little more intelligent than we were 100 years ago. I think that we are more conscious of it, we are more conscious of other people’s rights and things of that nature. Or when I say we, I mean the larger percentage of people. And so I think that — I guess the best way I know how to — which way is the pendulum going, and I think it is going up rather than down. Right now, some people would say, ‘Well how in the world can you say that?’ I am looking not just two years but I am looking kind of towards the future. And our problem — one of our problems of course is that people who feel about things in a way that are progressive sometimes sort of drop the ball. And say, ‘Oh well I am doing ok, and my children are doing ok and everything and I don’t believe I want to get into all of this. I am just gonna take it easy.’ And I don’t like that attitude and if you tell me that you get a good lecture from me.”

Though the voting restrictions that were passed by the North Carolina legislature never explicitly mentioned a category of people, the law disproportionately affects minority citizens. We asked if he believed that the tie between race and voting rights was intrinsic, and he definitively answered that the connection was a product of history.  Though we did not expect that answer, we realize now it encompasses his mindset of looking forward to the future positively, while also acknowledging the events that created the present.

So those who want to change have to convince enough people that what is going on is wrong and ought to be corrected, either because it is going to be good for the country or because in the long run it is going to be good for them. And if you can convince enough people of that, then you can make the kind of change that you want to, that you want to make. So I think that’s the way I look at it.”

Justice Frye, however, was also quick to recognize how the new voting rules are negatively affecting voting rights. When asked if progress on voting rights was coming undone, he unequivocally answered,

“Yes without question.”

However, in spite of this regression, he gave us an important, and needed perspective.

“People make the difference. And if you’ve got the right leadership and then the people working on it and working together, you can make things better. I hasten to say that, going over time, if you talk about centuries, we are in a much better time today than we were 100 years ago in terms of the country and things of that nature. But we have those times where I think we are sort of going in the wrong direction and some of us are trying to change it and get it in the right direction”

While the future for voting rights, seems bleak, Justice Frye ended his interview by saying,

“But again, I think the future is going to be brighter than the past.”

Only time will tell.