Reprinted from the March-April 2015 Post Script of Church & Life.
How long ago is 50 years? How long? Too long? Racism is taking far too long to end! We continue having many setbacks. I read the speech that Dr. Martin Luther King gave on the capitol steps of the Alabama capital 50 years ago. It has so much to say to us today; the march in Alabama was about ending violence and giving Black America the right to vote! King’s speech claims segregation, encouraging racism, is about political power—money!
How long ago is 50 years? How long? Too long? Racism is taking far too long to end! We continue having many setbacks. I read the speech that Dr. Martin Luther King gave on the capitol steps of the Alabama capital 50 years ago. It has so much to say to us today; the march in Alabama was about ending violence and giving Black America the right to vote! King’s speech claims segregation, encouraging racism, is about political power—money!
Here are some of Dr. King's words...
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave Negroes some part of their rightful dignity, but without the vote it was dignity without strength… Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.
Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South. To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.”
Is Dr. King correct? Is racism engineered rather than something “natural”? Are minorities discouraged from voting today for financial reasons (power)? We are witnessing serious erosion of the right to vote in the United States since the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 of the Federal Voting Rights Act requiring states and localities with a history of discrimination to have election –law changes pre-cleared by federal authorities. This ruling pulled the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act.
The 2014 election had the lowest voter turnout in 72 years. Since 2011 12 Republican-led states have passed stricter voter ID requirements. Are these requirements needed to “increase confidence in elections.” I think not. Do they suppress votes of young people, minorities and poor groups? Yes, they do, but there are many reasons people do not vote such as the competitiveness of a race. Whether these laws affect swing close elections is not the point! No one should be denied the right to vote! We need to march (or scream)!
Again, MLK:
The 2014 election had the lowest voter turnout in 72 years. Since 2011 12 Republican-led states have passed stricter voter ID requirements. Are these requirements needed to “increase confidence in elections.” I think not. Do they suppress votes of young people, minorities and poor groups? Yes, they do, but there are many reasons people do not vote such as the competitiveness of a race. Whether these laws affect swing close elections is not the point! No one should be denied the right to vote! We need to march (or scream)!
Again, MLK:
Let us march on ballot boxes until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress, men who will not fear to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God. ..Let us march on ballot boxes until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda… Let us march on ballot boxes until all over Alabama God’s children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor...
" How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it? How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever... How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice…
“Our God is marching on… Glory, Hallelujah!”
ji
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