By Jeff Guy
What a way to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s the King holiday and parents are harassing school boards because they don’t want their kids learning the truth about how their grandparents threw bricks, beat and spat on Black people.
Senators, who are supposed to represent all their constituents, are doing their darndest to keep Black and Brown people from voting. U.S. Senators like those good ol’ Texans, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, are threatening to use the filibuster to stonewall and prevent debate over the Voting Rights Act. Why not? The filibuster is a weapon white supremacists have been using for 100 years to keep the Black man in his place.
In the ‘20s, Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) introduced a bill to make lynching a federal crime. Southern Democrats used the filibuster to destroy the bill. The tactic would be used again and again over the decades, most infamously by white supremacist Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-SC) in 1957. The filibuster was invoked to deny Black people the vote, equal rights and the legality of hanging Black people by the neck until dead.
"Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?” Pres. Biden recently said at a speech in Atlanta. “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?"
Republicans were offended. Good. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Biden’s remarks “profoundly – profoundly – unpresidential.” Yes, he said that and we all know the serial tweeter who’s butt McConnell was kissing for four years.
The 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby v. Holder struck down provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which required certain states to get federal preclearance before changing state or local laws regarding elections. The states don’t need that oversight anymore, they’re good, the court ruled. That stuff may have been true 50 years ago, but not today.
Wikipedia stated: “Five years after the ruling, nearly 1,000 U.S. polling places had closed, many of them in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows that changing and reducing voting locations can reduce voter turnout.[5] There were also cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls and imposition of strict voter ID laws.[8][9] A 2020 study found that jurisdictions that had previously been covered by preclearance substantially increased their voter registration purges after the Shelby decision.[10] Virtually all restrictions on voting subsequent to the ruling were enacted by Republicans.[11]”
Power is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. – MLK
Biden has said he doesn’t know if we can win this fight to put teeth back into the Voting Rights Act. Maybe not. People like McConnell and Cruz are on the wrong side of history. They may have their moment now, but history will hold them to account.
They dishonor King, but ultimately his message of peace and equality will win out. King’s daughter, Bernice King, and George Wallace’s daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, are now friends. That’s the kind of thing King talked about in his “I Have a Dream” speech.
It will take persistence, perseverance and hard work to create the kind of world King envisioned, but let’s give it a go.
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” – MLK
“The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – MLK
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