When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.
The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
We talk about freedoms for African-Americans but unless you have more than one option politically, how free are you?
The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.
Black Fergusonians have shown that they will vote when they have something to vote for and know that their vote will count. Seventy-six percent of them turned out in November 2012, when Missouri was a key swing state for Barack Obama's reelection.
Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.
The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?
There's already been black presidents who've been corrupt, so it doesn't strike me that having a black man in office means he's going to be the Messiah.
The first black president will be a politician who is black.
You can't put civil rights on the ballot.