WASHINGTON -- The headline reads: "URGENT! URGENT! URGENT!" in thick black type. And the opening lines of the Internet message are designed to shock.
"I was wondering if anyone out there knew what the significance of the year 2007 is to black America?" it asks. "Did you know our right to vote will expire in the year 2007? Seriously."The unsigned but widely circulated Internet letter is as inaccurate as it is sensational, voting rights experts say.
But what is distressing to many black leaders is that so many black people would give even a second thought to its claim that their voting rights will expire in 2007, when certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act run out unless renewed by Congress.
"It's amazing we even have to discuss this," said Washington political analyst David Bositis with a heavy sigh. "To think that somehow black voters will lose the franchise is pretty preposterous."
Even so, the rumor is being tossed around on talk radio and making the rounds in cyber-chatrooms.
"I'd say we have gotten hundreds of calls on this over the past two years," said Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, incoming chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. "It's frustrating dealing with this hoax."
"It could be someone who is genuinely confused about the process, but it might be a vicious attempt at diverting African-Amercians from the important work that needs to be done in the election in 2000," Clyburn said.
He worries about what acceptance of the rumor says about the mind-set of black Americans.
"I think this tells us how precarious African-Americans feel in their status in this society," Clyburn said. "We had people near our campaign who were talking about this and we had to pull them to the side and say, 'Stop spreading this story.' "
Bositis said the rumor's persistence could be rooted in the history of black voting in America.
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870, guaranteed suffrage for blacks, but some states devised ways to keep blacks from actually voting for close to a century.
"Intimidation was the most common weapon, but states also used grandfather clauses and literacy tests to keep blacks from voting," Bositis said. "When they didn't want you to vote, you could have been a Harvard professor and still not passed their literacy tests."
The rumor's durability has caused the Justice Department to take the unusual step of acknowledging the message to assert its fallacy. The department's Web site includes a statement debunking the Voting Rights Act expiration tale.
"The rumor is false," it reads. "The voting rights of African Americans are guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, and those guarantees are permanent and do not expire."
Bositis said one lesson to be drawn from the whole affair is for people to closely watch where they get their information.