The Right to Vote Today. The Right to Vote Tomorrow. The Right to Vote Forever.

THE SIXTEENTH STREET Baptist Church in Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions became high when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to register African Americans to vote in Birmingham.

On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a week before the bombing he had told the New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals."


In light of former Alabama Congress Critter Artur Davis' baseless accusation black voters commit wholesale voter fraud without impunity I am cross posting a diary I composed during my tenure at Left in Alabama on the anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act. Links updated.

On this day in 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson (D. Texas) signed the National Voting Rights Act. For my fellow Americans who've always had the right and the privilege to vote today may not be a big deal to you, but to me and mine it's a very big deal.

The right to vote is sacred to African Americans. I know it sounds cliche, but it's steeped in blood, sweat, tears, courage and sacrifice. That's why we don't think Voter Suppression with the State Seal of Approval is funny. It's why we shake our heads at the tough Voter ID Laws enacted by red republican state legislatures. It's why we get weep silently when real voter fraud/suppression gets a slap on the wrist, and the imagined voter fraud is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It's like pre 1965 all over again.

My paternal grandparents were allowed to vote in the 1940's because they were educated/educators. They were teachers at what was known then as the Veterans Continuation School (pre GI Bill), a federal program designed for veterans returning home from the war to continue their education.

The classes were held at night and they a stipend. One of the classes they taught was how to pass the Literacy test. My grandparents were also exempt from paying the $2.00 poll tax because they taught at the school. So you see,  black veterans returning home from war, didn't have the full rights and privileges they fought for others to  have overseas.

My maternal grandfather could vote because as my mother says "he worked in the mines" and he was grandfathered in because his father "worked in the mines". My maternal grandmother cast her first vote after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. She was a Republican because "Lincoln freed the slaves". As much as we tried to tell her that was the Republican party of yesterday, she was loyal to the Republican party until the day she died.

My parents cast their first votes right here in Madison County in the 1950's. Although it was pre Voting Rights Act, they didn't have to pay a poll tax or take a literacy test. I remember my Daddy taking me to the Madison County Courthouse to register to vote on my 18th birthday, and my younger siblings on their 18th birthday. It's a rite of passage I continued with my own offspring.

Today is in honor of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (D. Texas) for having the courage to do the right thing. It's in honor of Viola Luzzio, who was murdered after the Selma to Montgomery March. Today we honor the memories of Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Denise McNair, Carol Robinson, Addie Mae Collins and Carol Wesley.

Some GOP members of congress believed the National Voting Rights Act is "over reaching" and objected to renewing it in 2006. Fortunately they were over ruled and the Voting Rights Act was extended for another 25 years.

In July 2006, 41 years after the Voting Rights Act passed, renewal of the temporary provisions enjoyed bi-partisan support. However, a number of Republican lawmakers acted to amend, delay or defeat renewal of the Act for various reasons. One group of lawmakers, led by Georgia congressman Lynn Westmoreland came from some preclearance states, and claimed that it was no longer fair to target their states, given the passage of time since 1965, and the changes their states had made to provide fair elections and voting.

Another group of 80 legislators supported an amendment offered by Steve King of Iowa, seeking to strip provisions from the Act that required that translators or multilingual ballots be provided for U.S. citizens who do not speak English.[5] The "King letter" said that providing ballots or interpreters in multiple languages is a costly, unfunded mandate.

Will the National Voting Rights Act need to be extended another 25 years? I don't know, but based on current GOP/conservative sentiment it sure looks like it.

Addendum

The real reason that I oppose the Republican Party has nothing to do with my being a Democrat. I'm not. I'm an independent, with no political party. I don't oppose the Republicans in order to support the Democrats, I oppose the Republicans because the kind of people who perpetrated the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing have joined the GOP. Prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Nixon's Southern Strategy, these people were loyal Democrats, partly because of the New Deal but mostly because of Reconstruction and the Civil War. When the Democratic Party split along sectional lines in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act, the Republicans reached out to the disaffected Southern Democrats, encouraged them to join the GOP. The party did not change the Dixiecrats, the Dixiecrats changed the party.

Whatever political party draws its strength from these people is the party I'm going to work to defeat.