Does anyone know who Rev. George Lee was? How about Herman Lee (no relation), Viola Gregg Liuzzo or Jonathan Myrick Daniels? Not only should we know who these people were, but we all should be honoring them and many other brave Americans by going to the polls this Tuesday in massive, record-breaking numbers. Hundreds of thousands of people made sacrifices great and small for us to exercise our right to cast a ballot for our preferred (or perhaps merely the least intolerable) candidates for elective office. Some of those people licked stamps, made flyers and organized. Some of them litigated. Some marched and some boycotted. Some were jailed and some were beaten bloody. The people mentioned above? They died. More accurately, they - like dozens, perhaps hundreds of others - were murdered. Murdered for registering black people. Murdered for giving rides to civil rights activists. Murdered for donating money so that poor people could pay poll taxes. Murdered for exercising their constitutional right to protest injustice. The criminals who killed those heroes - some of whom never faced earthly justice for their crimes - didnt want certain people to vote. Just like those who have indiscriminately purged voter roles, lost tens of thousands of voter registrations, shortened early voting periods, eliminated polling places without notice and generally increased the difficulty of the exercise of the voting franchise, those murderers wanted to stop black people from going to the polls. Perhaps we can argue that weve come a mighty long way in that no one has been killed by those seeking to limit opportunities for black people to vote. But Im sure that the people on whose shoulders we stand would look upon recent events with the dismay of those who might witness the record of their lifes work obliterated. Perhaps they would look to us and ask Are you really going to sit idly by and let this happen?. Its a fair question that we will answer, one way or another, on November 4th. My own question is slightly different. Will we denigrate the memories of those who sacrificed their comfort, their convenience, their livelihoods, their freedom and their very lives by not exercising the voting franchise for which they sacrificed? Election Day is Tuesday, November 4th. Vote.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 12:56:18 +0000
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