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Posts tagged as “Voting Rights”

Flowers to Civil Rights and Voting Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hamer For #WomensHistoryMonth (LISTEN)

Flowers to Civil Rights and Voting Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hamer For #WomensHistoryMonth (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on March 24, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

We celebrate grassroots organizer, civil rights and voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer in today’s Daily Drop podcast. Our salute to Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party founder Hamer is based on the Thursday, March 24 entry in “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022:

You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Thursday, March 24th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

“Sick and tired of being sick and tired,” in the 1960s, Mississippi plantation worker Fannie Lou Hamer was fired, threatened by white supremacists, and beaten in police custody when she tried to vote and register others to do the same.

But Hamer would not be silenced. She formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded to represent her state at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Hamer fought for voting rights, education rights, and economic rights and even ran for Senate.

Although she wasn’t rich, traditionally educated or well-connected,  Hamer was a grassroots leader who got involved – and stayed involved — because she believed to her core “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

Hamer passed in 1977 after years of dealing with serious health issues, but her legacy as an outspoken and effective activist, organizer and champion for equal rights will never be forgotten.

Last February, rapper and activist Common announced he’s producing a biographical movie on Hamer based on her 1967 autobiography To Praise Our Bridges and the book God’s Long Summer by Charles Marsh, which chronicles the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Just last month, the documentary Fannie Lou Hamer’s America debuted on PBS and can now be seen in full via WORLD Channel on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/5h2MzXavgEg

To learn more about Fannie Lou Hamer, you can read her autobiography on snccdigital.org, that’s SNCC digital dot org, read 2013’s The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like it Is, or check out 2021’s Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain and Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson.

You can also watch clips of Hamer’s speeches on YouTube, and check out links to these and other sources provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

(paid links)

VIDEO: “Michelle Obama’s Closing Argument” on Why It’s So Critical to Vote (A MUST WATCH)

VIDEO: “Michelle Obama’s Closing Argument” on Why It’s So Critical to Vote (A MUST WATCH)

By goodblacknews on October 6, 2020

“The one thing this President is really, really good at is using fear and confusion and  spreading lies to win.”

Released today, in a blistering, no-nonsense, direct video to the American people, former First Lady Michelle Obama spends 24 minutes and 12 records clearly, concisely and directly laying out why it’s so important to vote in the November election.

While Obama offers empathy for those suffering from Covid-19, including those in the White House, she also points out how “the President” has provided little to know direction or leadership during the crisis and how he continues to downplay the severity of the issue.

She also offers real talk to voters on the racial divisiveness afoot from the top:

You’ve worked hard all your life and for too long you’ve watched the rich get richer. You’ve lost your farm and your livelihoods to corporate greed. You’ve seen your beloved towns shattered by joblessness. You’ve watched families destroyed by drug addiction and mental health challenges – all of this long before this virus hit. And it is frustrating to hear some folks say that you’ve been the beneficiary of white privilege, that the color of your skin gives you a head start. That is the reality for far too many hardworking, decent Americans.

But right now, the President and his allies are trying to tap into that frustration and distract from his breathtaking failures by giving folks someone to blame other than them. They’re stoking fears about Black and brown Americans, lying about how minorities will destroy the suburbs, whipping up violence and intimidation. And they’re pinning it all on what’s been an overwhelmingly peaceful movement for racial solidarity. It’s true. Research backs it up. Only a tiny fraction of demonstrations have had any violence at all. So what the President is doing once again is patently false. It’s morally wrong and yes, it is racist.”

Obama also offers words of support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and then breaks it down even further:

As a Black woman who has — like the overwhelming majority of people of color in this nation — done everything in my power to live a life of dignity, and service, and honesty, the knowledge that any of my fellow Americans is more afraid of me than the chaos we are living through right now, well, that hurts. It hurts us all…  So I want to appeal for some empathy here, too. I want everyone who is still undecided to think about all those folks like me and my ancestors…

The millions of folks who look like me and fought and died and toiled as slaves and soldiers and laborers to help build this country. Put yourselves in our shoes for just a moment. Imagine how it feels to wake up every day and do your very best to uphold the values that this country claims to holds dear — truth, honor, decency — only to have those efforts met by scorn, not just by your fellow citizens, but by a sitting president.”

Obama continues to lay out the way racism is being used to destroy the nation and appeals to everyone, conservative and liberal alike to search their hearts and figure out what they truly value.  Then go to iwillvote.com to save democracy and “get the job done.”

Watch every minute and share. The message is worth it.

“You Are The Solution”: Dena Crowder’s 6-Minute Power Shot on Why Voting This November is So Crucial (WATCH)

“You Are The Solution”: Dena Crowder’s 6-Minute Power Shot on Why Voting This November is So Crucial (WATCH)

By goodblacknews on September 7, 2020

In today’s “Power Shot,” TEDx speaker, Power Lab performance coach and GBN’s “This Way Forward” contributor Dena Crowder explains so clearly and succinctly in three simple steps exactly how and why mobilizing to vote is so crucial this November, Good Black News is adding a fourth step:

WATCH and SHARE Dena’s video everywhere so anyone who is on the fence about voting can hop on over into the right side of history and utilize their power to affect significant change.

To quote just some of Dena’s insightful guidance:

There is no perfect, uncorrupted, ideal candidate, do not get caught up in that… Whoever wins this election is going to set the tone for the direction that we take on every single issue facing Black Americans.

We’re talking prison, we’re talking police, we’re talking human rights, we’re talking civil rights, we are talking healthcare and housing. So prioritize what really matters and vote the bigger picture.

Watch below… and share!

Steven L. Reed Elected Mayor of Montgomery; 1st African American to Lead Alabama’s Capitol Since its Founding

By goodblacknews on October 9, 2019
Newly-elected Montgomery, Alabama mayor Steven L. Reed (photo via wtvm.com)

Voters in Montgomery, Alabama made history Tuesday by decisively electing Steven L. Reed as their new and very first African American mayor in the 200 years since the city’s founding.

To quote the Washington Post:

Reed, already a trailblazer as Montgomery County’s first black probate judge, defeated David Woods, owner of the local Fox affiliate, in a non-partisan runoff election with 67 percent of the vote and all precincts reporting, according to the unofficial election results.

“This election has never been about me,” Reed, 45, said during his victory speech. “This election has never about just my ideas. It’s been about all of the hopes and dreams that we have as individuals and collectively in this city … and the way we found the opportunity to improve outcomes regardless of neighborhood, regardless of Zip code, regardless of anything that may divide us or make us different from one another.”

His victory reverberated well beyond Montgomery as many celebrated the milestone in a city remembered as both the cradle of the Confederacy and the birthplace of the civil rights movement. Montgomery, where about 60 percent of residents are black, was the first capital of the Confederate States of America, becoming a bastion of racial violence and discrimination in the Jim Crow era but also of protests and resistance in the civil rights era.

It’s home to the Montgomery bus boycott against segregation led by Rosa Parks, and it’s home to the Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights led by Martin Luther King Jr. It was in Montgomery where, after the third march in March 1965, King addressed a crowd of 25,000 people on the steps of the Alabama Capitol, famously saying, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“This is a historic day for our nation,” Karen Baynes-Dunning, interim president and chief executive of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is based in Montgomery, said Tuesday on Twitter. “The election of Steven Reed, the first black mayor of Montgomery, AL, symbolizes the new inclusive & forward thinking South that so many have worked to achieve.”

To read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/09/steven-reed-montgomery-first-black-mayor-alabama/

The Congressional Black Caucus Sworn in Today With More Than 50 Members – Largest in its History

By goodblacknews on January 3, 2019
CBC Members of the 116th Congress

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

The Congressional Black Caucus, for the first time in its 48-year history, has more than 50 members. At today’s swearing in ceremony the total was 55 members, nbcnews.com reports.

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif, was elected CBC chair, and according to her website, the Caucus will also chair five full House Committees in addition to 28 House Subcommittees.

The caucus includes elected officials from both the House and Senate, and since its establishment in 1971, the CBC has been committed to using the full Constitutional power, statutory authority, and financial resources of the federal government to ensure that African Americans and other marginalized communities in the United States have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.

As part of this commitment, the CBC has fought to address critical issues such as voting rights, criminal justice reform, equal access to quality education.

To learn more about the Congressional Black Caucus, go to: https://cbc.house.gov.

ELECTION DAY 2018: Have You Voted? #WhenWeAllVote

By goodblacknews on November 6, 2018
GBN Editors Lori Lakin Hutcherson (l) and Lesa Lakin (r) voting at the polls on November 6, 2018.

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Just a quick reminder if you haven’t found a moment yet to make it to the polls today, there’s still time! GBN Lifestyle/Sports Editor Lesa Lakin and I have hit our respective voting places already – fortunately we had good weather – we urge you to do the same if you haven’t already. We must never forget the sacrifices those who came before us have made – marching, protesting, even dying – to secure every citizen’s right to vote.

photo via National Youth Rights Association

So let’s protect our rights and let the powers that be know when we demand change. If you don’t like your local, state or federal laws or officials, foster change by making your voice heard. If you’re not sure where your polling place is, click here to enter your address to find out. If you don’t have transportation, Lyft and Uber are offering free or discounted rides. If you get to the polls and there is some discrepancy, you have the right to demand a provisional ballot. Keegan-Michael Key and Chris Rock lay the facts out about this beautifully in the video below:

Onward and upward, together! #GoVote

Georgia ACLU and Voting Rights Activists Move to Block Plan to Close Two-Thirds of Randolph County’s Polling Places

By goodblacknews on August 19, 2018
Georgia ACLU Staff (photo via aclu.org)

by Vanessa Williams, WashingtonPost via sandiegouniontribune.com

Voting rights activists in Georgia say they will launch a petition drive in an effort to collect enough signatures of registered voters to block a proposal to close more than two-thirds of polling precincts in a predominantly black county ahead of this fall’s general election.

The plan to shutter the voting sites in Randolph County, a rural community about 2½ hours south of Atlanta, has been drawn dozens of local residents and progressive groups to two public hearings in recent days. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a formal protest with the county’s board of elections.

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, which oversees elections operations throughout the state, has issued a statement urging Randolph County officials to “abandon this effort.” Kemp also is the Republican nominee in one of the country’s most-watched gubernatorial contests. The Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams, a former state legislator, is seeking to become the nation’s first black female governor.

The two-member county election board – a third member stepped down recently – has scheduled a vote for Friday on the proposal to shutter seven of the county’s nine polling places, citing problems including facilities in disrepair or inaccessible to persons with disabilities. But some activists are suspicious of the board’s motives, noting that Randolph County is 60 percent black and many residents have low incomes. The county, which covers 431 square miles, has no public transportation system.

All nine of the polling places were used for the May primaries and less than a month ago for statewide run-offs, in which Kemp, helped by an endorsement from President Donald Trump, beat Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle for the GOP nomination.

Local news outlets reported heated discussions at meetings on Thursday and Friday, with residents and activists alleging the move was aimed at suppressing turnout in the county, in which more than 55 percent of the voters are black and have backed Democratic candidates in statewide elections.

County officials and a consultant hired by local officials said the closures were necessary because the sites were not compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act and there was not time to fix them before the Nov. 6 general election. They also suggested that affected residents could vote by absentee ballot.

“You don’t solve problems of accessibility for people with disabilities by reducing access for people without disabilities,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the Georgia ACLU, which wrote a letter to the board stating that the closures would be a violation of the Voting Rights Act because it would have a negative effect on African-American voters. The group noted that African-Americans make up more than 96 percent of the voters at one of the polling places slated for closure.

Unsure if the board will be persuaded by the arguments for keeping the polling places open, some activists will try to stop the plan by using a state law that forbids the closure of voting sites if 20 percent of the registered voters in the affected precinct object to the change. The county currently has just over 4,000 registered voters.

Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, a voter registration and education group, said activists will begin collecting signatures Sunday, spreading the word at morning church services.

“We want to see to it that the hundreds of students we registered at Andrew College and the people we’ve registered in Randolph are able to exercise their sacred, fundamental right to vote,” Ufot said. The goal is to submit the petition before the board’s scheduled Friday vote.

A similar petition drive overturned a decision two years ago by elections officials in Macon-Bibb County to relocate a polling place from a school to the sheriff’s office.

“These polling place closures are part of a stark pattern that we are seeing across Georgia whereby officials are working to make it harder for African Americans and other minorities to vote,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The more communities mobilize to turn out the vote, the harsher the voter suppression efforts undertaken by officials. We are prepared to use every tool in our arsenal to ensure that African American voters are able to have meaningful access to the polls this election cycle.”

Read more: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/us-politics/ct-georgia-voting-rights-polling-places-20180818-story.html#

LOCAL HERO: How Perman Hardy, 59, Helped Drive Doug Jones to Victory in Alabama's Black Belt with her SUV

LOCAL HERO: How Perman Hardy, 59, Helped Drive Doug Jones to Victory in Alabama's Black Belt with her SUV

By goodblacknews on December 15, 2017
Perman Hardy has driven Lowndes County voters to the polls for 25 years. (PHOTO: Connor Sheets)

by Connor Sheets (csheets@al.com)via al.com

If you live in Lowndes County and are of voting age, it’s a safe bet that Perman Hardy has spoken with you about voting at some point in the past 25 years.
As one of the thousands of sharecroppers who worked white men’s land in Lowndes County over the years, 59-year-old Hardy recalls picking cotton after school growing up. She eventually finished her education, bought her own home, and had a successful career as a home health nurse.
But for the past two-and-a-half decades, Hardy has dedicated much of her free time to another pursuit: trying to ensure that every single person in Lowndes County shows up to the polls for every election in Alabama. A native of the unincorporated community of Collirene, she has done about as much as one person possibly could to boost turnout in the impoverished, majority-black county with a population of just 10,458 people.
“That’s my goal is to make sure everyone votes. That’s always been my goal. This is what I do every election,” she said as she steered her forest-green Chevrolet Tahoe through Collirene, a rural area that was once home to several cotton plantations that employed generations of slaves and sharecroppers. “We’re in an epidemic poverty county so it’s so important for us to vote today,” she told AL.com. “I took some people today who’ve never cast a ballot before.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAzySQSMKjY?rel=0&autoplay=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.al.com&widgetid=1]

On Tuesday, like she says she does every time Alabamians head to the polls, Hardy spent more than 10 hours driving registered voters to polling stations who did not have transportation or were otherwise unable to make the trip without help. Over the course of the day, she personally drove more than 50 people to polling sites across Lowndes County.

Most of the people Hardy transported Tuesday were black supporters of Democrat Doug Jones, which contributed to his win in the Black Belt county, where 3,779 people voted for Jones and just 988 voted for Republican Roy Moore, a margin of 79.1 percent to 20.7 percent. Black voters played a decisive role in Jones’s victory in the hotly contested Senate election, with 96 percent of African-Americans voting for Jones, versus the 30 percent of white voters who backed him Tuesday, according to a Washington Post poll.

Civil Rights and War Hero Octavius Catto to Become Philadelphia's 1st African American Honored With a Public Statue

Civil Rights and War Hero Octavius Catto to Become Philadelphia's 1st African American Honored With a Public Statue

By goodblacknews on August 17, 2017

This model of the Octavius V. Catto Memorial shows the statue, pillars and ballot box elements that will make up the $1.75 million project. (photo via phillyvoice.com)

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
According to blavity.com, Octavius Valentine Catto will be honored with a statue outside of Philadelphia’s city hall this September. Catto’s statue will be the first monument built to honor an African American erected on public land in the City of Brotherly Love. Although Catto’s memorial has been in the works for years, in the wake of the push to take so many Confederate statues down across the nation, the timing for this statue’s unveiling could not be better.
In Charleston, South Carolina on February 22, 1839, Catto was born a free black man. Catto excelled at his studies, attending a school for black children in Philadelphia, the Institute for Colored Youth, an institution he later led.
According to phillyvoice.com, in his early 20s, Catto was already an active leader in the African American community. He was a member of the 4th Ward Black Political Club, the Union League Association, the Library Company and the Franklin Institute. He demanded that African Americans fight in the Civil War and helped get their regiments inducted into the war. In 1863, at the height of the Civil War, he joined the army and enlisted as a volunteer in defense of the state of Pennsylvania.
Octavius Catto (photo via phillyvoice.com)

Catto was also a major in the Pennsylvania National Guard and played baseball as captain and second baseman for the Pythians, an African American baseball team. He was inducted into the Negro League Baseball Museum’s Hall of Fame.
Beyond being an educator, ball player and a war hero, Philadelphia is celebrating Catto for his local civil rights activism, which went into full gear after he was kicked off of a segregated horse-drawn trolley. He staged a sit-in on the streetcars, refusing to move off of the car. The driver drove the car off of its track and unhitched its horses, unsure how else to get rid of Catto. Catto remained aboard; the other passengers and the driver left him there. Catto also defended several black women who were forcibly ejected from the city’s streetcars, and used a fine levied against his fiancée to drum up publicity for his cause. Finally, in 1867, due in large part to Catto’s pressure, the city desegregated its streetcars.
“In Philadelphia, at that time, you could be wearing a Civil War uniform and not have been able to get on that trolley car,” said Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, who has been hoping to bring a statue of Catto to the city since at least 2003, after he learned the story of Catto’s life. “[Knowing this] you realize, this struggle isn’t just a 1960s struggle. It’s a struggle from the beginning of the country.”

Civil Rights Icon Fannie Lou Hamer Biopic to be Scripted by "Remember The Titans" Writer Gregory Allen Howard

Civil Rights Icon Fannie Lou Hamer Biopic to be Scripted by "Remember The Titans" Writer Gregory Allen Howard

By goodblacknews on July 16, 2017

Fannie Lou Hamer (photo via powerpacplus.org)

by Mike Fleming Jr. via deadline.com
Remember the Titans scribe Gregory Allen Howard has teamed with Chris Columbus’ 1492 production company to tell the story of Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper with a sixth-grade education who became an important voting-rights advocate and founded the first integrated political party in the South in mid-’60s Mississippi.
Hamer grew up in a family of 20 kids and picked cotton for most of her life. After going to a doctor to have a tumor removed, she discovered she was given a hysterectomy at age 47 by a white doctor, without her consent, because of a movement by the state to sterilize women to reduce the number of poor blacks in Mississippi.
Hamer became a Civil Rights activist, surviving assassination attempts
Gregory Allen Howard (photo via deadline.com)

and a near-fatal beating to get her moment at the Democratic National Convention, where she challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 with her legendary, “Is This America?” speech.
While LBJ hastily called a ruse press conference in the hope of diverting attention away from her speech, Hamer’s powerful words were widely broadcast and reverberated around the world. Howard, who studied Hamer’s accomplishments as a college student, has long been obsessed with bringing her story to the screen. Hamer died in 1977.
To read more, go to: Civil Rights Icon Fannie Lou Hamer Movie; Gregory Allen Howard script | Deadline