Saturday, October 06, 2012

If you are an African-American who refuses to vote in November, read this

In the past months, there have been some" filthy entities" (for lack of a better word which would not be  as vulgar) hired by other forces designed to play the black and gay community against one another.

 These "entities" have been spreading a message that due to Obama's support of marriage equality, African-Americans should withhold our votes from him in November. Bear in mind, they did not say vote for the other guy (Romney), but withhold our votes. In other words, don't vote at all.

Before you take the words of these "entities" to heart, please view at least one of the following videos:


Bloody Sunday - Between 1961 and 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had led a voting registration campaign in Selma, the seat of Dallas County, Alabama, a small town with a record of consistent resistance to black voting.

When SNCC’s efforts were frustrated by stiff resistance from the county law enforcement officials, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were persuaded by local activists to make Selma’s intransigence to black voting a national concern. SCLC also hoped to use the momentum of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to win federal protection for a voting rights statute. During January and February, 1965, King and SCLC led a series of demonstrations to the Dallas County courthouse. On February 17, protester Jimmy Lee Jackson was fatally shot by an Alabama state trooper.

In response, a protest march from Selma to Montgomery was scheduled for March 7. Six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on Sunday, March 7, and, led by SNCC and SCLC, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. Just short of the bridge, they found their way blocked by Alabama State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around. When the protesters refused, the officers shot teargas and waded into the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and ultimately hospitalizing over fifty people.




Legendary Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer rocked the 1964 Democractic National Convention with the story of the brutal beating and sexual assault she and others endured for merely seeking the right to vote. The beating left her with physical problems which plagued her until the end of her life.

Transcript:

Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis. It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.

After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down -- tried to register. After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. And before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know -- did Pap tell you what I said?" And I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Well I mean that." Said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." Said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," said, "you still might have to go because we're not ready for that in Mississippi." And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself." I had to leave that same night. On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also, Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in. And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus.

When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people -- to use the restaurant -- two of the people wanted to use the washroom. The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out." I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too. As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the five people in a highway patrolman's car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the five workers was in and said, "Get that one there." And when I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me. I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams. I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'yes, sir,' nigger? Can you say 'yes, sir'?" And they would say other horrible names. She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'" "So, well, say it." She said, "I don't know you well enough." They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people. And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell.

One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. And I told him Ruleville. He said, "We are going to check this." And they left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We're going to make you wish you was dead." I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack. The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face. And I laid on my face, the first Negro began to beat me.

And I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old. After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack. The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat to sit on my feet -- to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.

One white man -- my dress had worked up high -- he walked over and pulled my dress -- I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up. I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered. All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America? Thank you. 

The bottom line is this - vote for who you want to vote for, but please vote. These "entitites" who claim that African-Americans should withhold our votes because of the President's support of marriage equality do a larger disservice to the community. By using such a petty reason in order to persuade African-Americans to not vote, these "entities" who are supposed to be our brothers and sisters have thrown their lot with the vicious mindset which in the past used violence to keep us from voting and now in the present are using Voter ID nonsense and other bastardizations of the law to keep us from the ballot box.

And before you vote, ask yourself just who is doing the black community a disservice - gays who simply want their idea of equality or people who are telling you to spit on the spirits of Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, and a host of others by not taking advantage of what their sweat, toil, and blood gave you.

Don't be persuaded by fools with platitudes of sincerity on their faces while they have thick wads of dirty cash in their back pockets. It's not the gays who are trying to use African-Americans. It's these people. Recognize your true enemies and vote.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it fascinating and frightening how hard minories have had to fight for freedom and equality in the "Land of the Free."

Erica Cook said...

I don't care what your race is. VOTE

Anonymous said...

the phrase
"land of the free" is one of the many lies that white America kept/keeps telling the world while we subjugate millions of our own citizens to outdated and bigoted public policy and action.

ColdCountry said...

I was young, but I remember those times. I remember the 'whites only' signs in places when we took a Christmas vacation in Florida. I remember how difficult it was for my parents to try and explain to a 12 year old not only how, but why, these things could happen. I had never encountered prejudice, never seen racial hatred before. I didn't understand how people could behave that way toward other people, and I still can't.

Women, too, suffered for the right to vote, so everybody... VOTE!

Anonymous said...

I would also add the names of Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson to your list of hero[ine]s, Alvin. They deserve to be remembered, too.

BlackTsunami said...

Those poor babies. Definitely, Graciesdaddy.

Ned Flaherty said...

Just my opinion . . .

Of all the articles ever published on this blog, this one should be re-broadcast nationwide to illustrate how in 2012 the Republican Party is suppressing votes in every swing state.