Tuesday, November 11, 2014

VOTING IS NOT AN OPTION IT’S A MUST BY: KB © 11.11.14

REAL TALK from KB: I was disgusted by the turn out for the mid-term elections I have met a few folks and heard far too many Black folks talk about why they do not vote; I’m appalled! You should be the first people at the polls. Sure the electoral vote system is flawed but we will never get to the place of 1 man, 1 vote if you stay away from the polls. 

Are you disgusted that race relations are once again becoming factors for determining education, health care, loan rates, housing costs? We have become brainwashed, delusion and complacent about the issue of race in this country. We have adopted an “I got mine, you get yours” mentality; if you think back to our most productive times as a people, we worked as a collective.
Allow me to share a few reasons why I am stressing the act of voting
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  • -         Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) is an American activist known for being the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.


  • -         Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 


  • -         George Wallace, one of the most controversial politicians in U.S. history, was elected governor of Alabama in 1962 under an ultra-segregationist platform. In his 1963 inaugural address, he promised his white followers: "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" When African American students attempted to desegregate the University of Alabama in June 1963, Alabama's new governor, flanked by state troopers, literally blocked the door of the enrollment office. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, had declared segregation unconstitutional in 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, and the executive branch undertook aggressive tactics to enforce the ruling.

   
     On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy federalized National Guard troops and deployed them to the University of Alabama to force its desegregation. The next day, Governor Wallace yielded to the federal pressure, and two African American students--Vivian Malone and James A. Hood--successfully enrolled. In September of the same year, Wallace again attempted to block the desegregation of an Alabama public school--this time Tuskegee High School in Huntsville--but President Kennedy once again employed his executive authority and federalized National Guard troops. Wallace had little choice but to yield.
       
  •       In Oxford, Mississippi, James H. Meredith, an African American, is escorted onto the University of Mississippi campus by U.S. Marshals, setting off a deadly riot. Two men were killed before the racial violence was quelled by more than 3,000 federal soldiers. The next day, Meredith successfully enrolled and began to attend classes amid continuing disruption.


-         A former serviceman in the U.S. Air Force, Meredith applied and was accepted to the University of Mississippi in 1962, but his admission was revoked when the registrar learned of his race. A federal court ordered "Ole Miss" to admit him, but when he tried to register on September 20, 1962, he found the entrance to the office blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. On September 28, the governor was found guilty of civil contempt and was ordered to cease his interference with desegregation at the university or face arrest and a fine of $10,000 a day. Two days later, Meredith was escorted onto the Ole Miss campus by U.S. Marshals. Turned back by violence, he returned the next day and began classes. Meredith, who was a transfer student from all-black Jackson State College, graduated with a degree in political science in 1963. 

Educate yourselves to the Civil Right Voting Act: In the 1950s, the American Civil Rights Movement escalated pressure on the federal government to protect the voting rights of racial minorities. In 1957, Congress passed the first voting-rights legislation since Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of 1957

SINCE RECONSTRUCTION – THAT’S THE CIVIL WAR Y’ALL and it was written in such a way where it lacks “teeth” bits and pieces are up for debate on a regular basis. This is why the Southern states are allowed to run amuck every election.

If we do not exercise our RIGHT to vote we will be back in a position where we will have to take tests to qualify or paying poll taxes to exclude certain people from the decision making process.


Apathy is a slow painful death!

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