Joe Biden accused Republicans of trying to bring back the Jim Crow era.
“Speaking of dignity, we have to protect — which is not happening now — the single most important right you have as an American. The right to vote,” the former vice president said at a campaign rally in Columbia, S.C. “We’ve got Jim Crow sneaking back in. No, I mean it.”
“If everyone has an equal right to vote, guess what? They lose,” Biden said, criticizing Republican legislation he said was aimed at limiting people’s voting rights. “So folks, it’s just absolutely wrong, and the Justice Department if I’m your president will be, you might say, aggressive in making sure it doesn’t happen.”
Biden pointed to states that have introduced bills that he said would restrict voting and claimed they were targeting people of color.
In 2012, Biden told a predominantly black audience in Danville, Va., that Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, would “put you all back in chains” if he were elected.
Biden launched his campaign last month with a video slamming President Trump’s comments in response to the Charlottesville, Va., Unite the Right rally in August of 2017.
“The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America, America is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Biden said in the video.
Biden’s 2020 campaigned has, in part, centered on characterizing Trump as a racist and therefore un-American.
[Also read: Joe Biden says he wants to make America ‘straight’ again]
