Tuskegee Mayor Johnny Ford sits in his office, which has a mix of professional and personal mementos. (Photo by Jeffrey Pierre/News21)

TUSKEGEE, Ala. – Johnny Ford is the first black mayor of Tuskegee, a sleepy town of about 9,000 people in southeast Alabama.

It’s the birthplace of Rosa Parks and home of Booker T. Washington’s historically black Tuskegee University.

Ford got his start in politics working for U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and he later worked for the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service.

In 1972, Ford ran for mayor of Tuskegee. Despite the fact that the town was about 80 percent black at the time, Ford faced significant challenges.

“The whites had specifically placed all the voter registration days during the summertime while the students were away,” Ford said. “Why? Four thousand students, small town, they could elect anyone.”

Researchers pointed out the significance: Tuskegee occupied “an unusual place” in history because it was essentially a college town, which meant the faculty and students made up one of the largest groups of “professional and middle-class blacks in the South” at the time, according to encyclopedia.com.

But Ford had a solution. Several groups of students hadn’t gone home for the summer – the band, cheerleaders and the football team. Ford and a fraternity brother he’d gone to college with rented a bus and drove students to register to vote.

“When those conservative white registrars saw those big 250-pound football players coming off the bus, it scared them to death,” Ford said. “Seriously, they locked the doors and would not register them because … it was almost closing time.”

The next morning, Ford filed a federal lawsuit claiming the workers violated the Voting Rights Act by not registering the students. He said Judge William Varner – who he knew – heard the case.

“His house is up at the end of the street, where my mother worked as a domestic person when I was growing up,” Ford said. “And I was the yard boy.”

Ford said Varner ordered the officials to register the students to vote. Ford drove them back to the board of registrars and registered about 150 students.

On Election Day, Ford won by 127 votes.

“I became the mascot for the football team,” Ford laughed.

Now in his eighth nonconsecutive term as mayor, Ford criticized Alabama’s voter ID law. The law, which took effect in 2014, requires voters to show a photo ID to cast a ballot.

The Brennan Center estimated that more than one in 10 voting-age citizens don’t have a government-issued photo ID, but  African-Americans have a much higher rate: 25 percent don’t have them.

Ford also criticized the state’s department of motor vehicle service cuts. In September 2015, Gov. Robert Bentley announced the closure of 31 driver’s license offices throughout the state. Three weeks later, he announced the offices would remain open, but only one day a month.

Ford said he’s disappointed in Bentley, who worked with Ford while they were state legislators. Ford said he believes the policies have racial motives.

“That whole effort was designed to discourage and make it more difficult for African-Americans to get registered to vote in the state of Alabama,” Ford said.

Macon County is one of the counties with only one DMV open once a month.

“We fight (for voting rights) every day,” Ford said. “Every day. And we will not stop.”

“I will die first before I let the governor, the attorney general or anyone else violate my voting rights.”

Come back Aug. 20 to see the full News21 report on “Voting Wars.”

John Jackson Jr. poses for a portrait at the SNCC Black Panther Party Freedom House in White Hall, Alabama. The Freedom House, owned by the Jackson family, served as the headquarters of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voting rights campaign during the civil rights movement. (Photo by Pinar Istek/News21)

WHITE HALL, Ala. – Once the mayor of White Hall in poverty-stricken Lowndes County, John Jackson now owns the Piggly Wiggly off Route 80, where the shelves are nearly bare and the parking lot even emptier.

Jackson was born and raised in Lowndes County and served as mayor of his hometown of White Hall from 1980, when the town was incorporated, until 2009. According to U.S. Census Bureau, White Hall has a population of just 800 people, 41 percent of whom live below the poverty line.

During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Jackson was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Jackson, now in his 60s, said he and others, including Stokely Carmichael, a leader with the coordinating committee, started the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, which was an early precursor to the Black Panther Party – in which Carmichael played a major role. The freedom organization’s goal was to educate people in Alabama’s Black Belt about how to vote, and more importantly, to encourage them to run for local elected office.

“That was our whole goal was to get black people elected,” said Jackson, his raspy voice dropping to a reverent tone. “We started getting people elected to the board of education, county council, deputy sheriff … and then to see Barack Obama get elected president? That was the happiest moment of my life.”

But then came the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which ended certain requirements for some states and jurisdictions to get preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice before enacting certain new voting regulations.

“They’re trying to turn back the hands of time, trying to make it harder for black people to vote. It’s just a disgrace, because if they take away the right to vote, then we’re left off,” Jackson said. “They’re not really talking about the right to vote, but they’re trying to make it harder for you to have that right to vote”

One regulation that took effect in Alabama after the Shelby County decision required citizens to show a photo ID to vote. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has said the state is doing everything it can to make sure eligible voters are registered and have a photo ID. As evidence, he points to the mobile voter ID unit, which travels to each county at least once a year to give out free photo IDs.

But Jackson said the rural nature of Lowndes County, which has a population of just more than 10,000 and is 40 miles outside of Montgomery, makes the mobile unit small comfort to its residents.

“There are a lot of older people who might not have an ID. They might not have nothing but a Social Security card,” Jackson said. “They don’t have a driver’s license. So those people are gonna be turned around at the polls.”

Advocates for voter ID said the requirements protect the integrity of the democratic process and prevent voter fraud.

“That’s just a gimmick to discourage the black vote,” Jackson said, adding that he believes in the importance of voting.

“Every vote counts,” he said. “It’s very important to put people into office that’s going to stand up and be truthful and do what needs to be done for the whole community.”

Follow Alex Amico on Twitter @AlexFAmico.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said the recent changes to voter ID laws have been to maintain the “credibility of the electoral process.” (Photo by Jeffrey Pierre/News21)

SELMA, Ala. – Since Alabama’s photo voter ID law went into effect in 2014, the state has started setting up mobile ID locations to better reach people who now need the documentation to vote.

The law was passed in 2011 and took effect in 2014. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said the law is meant “to ensure that we had credibility and integrity in the electoral process.”

“If we have one incident of voter fraud, one incident of the integrity of the election process being violated, it’s one too many,” Merrill said. “So we’re going to do everything we can to prevent that from occurring.”

Now Alabama voters must have a specific type of photo identification at the polls to vote. But if they don’t have an approved form, they can get Alabama photo voter ID from various locations, including mobile units.

Merrill said the state coordinates with local officials on the best places in each county to set up ID locations. They travel to festivals and other gatherings, setting up computers and ID machines to provide photo voter IDs to those who qualify for one.

Critics of the photo ID law say it disproportionately affects poor and minority voters. A Brennan Center study found that 25 percent of African-Americans nationwide have no photo ID.

Not a single person showed up to the mobile locations in Dallas County on June 17 to get an ID.

“Honestly, by this time we should be registering people,” said Dallas County Registrar Carl Nelson, 76, at Ebenezer Baptist Church about an hour and a half into the drive. “And we’re not. … I don’t know why we’re not having people here today, really.”

Nelson’s fellow registrar, Bobby Willis, 80, said the county had seen a slowdown in voter registration, probably because everyone who wants to vote already has registered.

“We’ve got a lot of people doing voting drives all over the city, and when they do, they bring the forms back to us,” Willis said. “And it’s kind of slowed down.”

Both men said the county hadn’t seen any problems with the rollout of the voter ID law.

“This voter ID, it works just fine,” Willis said. “We haven’t had anybody complain about it.”

Nelson agreed. “If folks don’t get registered, it’s their own fault. … There are some naysayers who say these are hard times (to get an ID). They’re not. If they want to get registered, they can get registered.”

Dallas County had slightly lower turnout than the overall state in recent years. According to data from the secretary of state’s office, 41 percent of Alabama voters voted in the 2014 gubernatorial election, while turnout in Dallas County was 40.4 percent. The difference in 2012 was greater – state turnout was 73.2 percent, while Dallas County’s was 63.26 percent.

Still, some critics have suggested Alabama’s law was passed with racial and political motives.

“Voting is like breathing the air as far as I’m concerned. There should be no barriers,” Tuskegee Mayor Johnny Ford said. “And these Republicans are the ones who, primarily, keep coming up with these barriers.”

Willis said he has seen voting as an important responsibility his entire life.

“It’s kind of an inherited thing from the family, everyone always cared about what was going on with the government and voting. So it’s just part of life.”

Dallas County Registrar Carl Nelson, 76, speaks to fellow registrar, Bobby Willis, 80, at Ebenezer Baptist Church during a voter registration drive in Selma. (Photo by Jeffrey Pierre/News21)

Follow Alex Amico on Twitter @AlexFAmico.