(NAME-MCE) Voting Rights

[Bill Howe]

Thanks Sandy for this. Any mention of the Voting Righths Act brings to mind
LBJ's speech in support of it. The speech is often cited as one of the Top
100 Speeches. Here it is ---- from
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/johnson.htm


In this very eloquent speech to the full Congress, President Lyndon B.
Johnson used the phrase "we shall overcome," borrowed from African-American
leaders struggling for equal rights.

The speech was made on March 15, 1965, a week after deadly racial violence
erupted in Selma, Alabama, as African-Americans were attacked by police
while preparing to march to Montgomery to protest voting rights
discrimination.

Discrimination took the form of literacy, knowledge or character tests
administered solely to African-Americans to keep them from registering to
vote.

Civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King and over 500 supporters planned
to march from Selma to Montgomery to register African-Americans to vote. The
police violence that erupted resulted in the death of a King supporter, a
white Unitarian Minister from Boston named James J. Reeb.

A second attempt to march to Montgomery was also blocked by police. It took
Federal intervention with the 'federalizing' of the Alabama national guard
and the addition of over 2000 other guards to ensure protection and allow
the march to begin.

On March 21, 1965 the march to Montgomery finally began with over 3000
participants, under the glare of worldwide news publicity.

 *I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of Democracy. I
urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all
colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause. *

*At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape
a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington
and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in
Selma, Alabama. There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the
denial of their rights as Americans. Many of them were brutally assaulted.
One good man--a man of God--was killed. *

*There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no
cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions
of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our Democracy in
what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and
protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty
of this great government--the government of the greatest nation on earth.
Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country--to
right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live
with the moments of great crises. Our lives have been marked with debate
about great issues, issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and
depression. *

*But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America
itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance,
or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes
and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for
American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and
should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to
this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For, with
a country as with a person, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul?" *

*There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no
Northern problem. There is only an American problem. *

*And we are met here tonight as Americans--not as Democrats or Republicans;
we're met here as Americans to solve that problem. This was the first nation
in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. *

*The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart,
North and South: "All men are created equal." "Government by consent of the
governed." "Give me liberty or give me death." And those are not just clever
words, and those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have
fought and died for two centuries and tonight around the world they stand
there as guardians of our liberty risking their lives. Those words are
promised to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This
dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions. It cannot be found in his
power or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a
man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in
freedom. He shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his
family according to his ability and his merits as a human being. *

*To apply any other test, to deny a man his hopes because of his color or
race or his religion or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice,
it is to deny Americans and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for
American freedom. Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights
of man was to flourish it must be rooted in democracy. This most basic right
of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country
in large measure is the history of expansion of the right to all of our
people. *

*Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But
about this there can and should be no argument: every American citizen must
have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial
of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the
duty we have to insure that right. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places
in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are
Negroes. *

*Every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny
this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the
day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And
if he persists and, if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he
may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name, or because
he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an
application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether
he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or
explain the most complex provisions of state law. *

*And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and
write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a
white skin. Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law
cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now
have on the books, and I have helped to put three of them there, can insure
the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. In such a
case, our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no
person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. *

*We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that
Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath. Wednesday, I will
send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right
to vote. The broad principles of that bill will be in the hands of the
Democratic and Republican leaders tomorrow. After they have reviewed it, it
will come here formally as a bill. I am grateful for this opportunity to
come here tonight at the invitation of the leadership to reason with my
friends, to give them my views and to visit with my former colleagues. *

*I have had prepared a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation which
I had intended to transmit to the clerk tomorrow, but which I will submit to
the clerks tonight. But I want to really discuss the main proposals of this
legislation. This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all
elections, federal, state and local, which have been used to deny Negroes
the right to vote. *

*This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used,
however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution. It will provide for
citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government, if
the state officials refuse to register them. It will eliminate tedious,
unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote. Finally, this
legislation will insure that properly registered individuals are not
prohibited from voting. I will welcome the suggestions from all the members
of Congress--I have no doubt that I will get some--on ways and means to
strengthen this law and to make it effective. *

*But experience has plainly shown that this is the only path to carry out
the command of the Constitution. To those who seek to avoid action by their
national government in their home communities, who want to and who seek to
maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple: open
your polling places to all your people. Allow men and women to register and
vote whatever the color of their skin. Extend the rights of citizenship to
every citizen of this land. There is no Constitutional issue here. The
command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is
wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote
in this country. *

*There is no issue of state's rights or national rights. There is only the
struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your
answer. But the last time a President sent a civil rights bill to the
Congress it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal
elections. That civil rights bill was passed after eight long months of
debate. And when that bill came to my desk from the Congress for signature,
the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated. *

*This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, or no hesitation, or no
compromise with our purpose. We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the
right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to
participate in. *

*And we ought not, and we cannot, and we must not wait another eight months
before we get a bill. We have already waited 100 years and more and the time
for waiting is gone. So I ask you to join me in working long hours and
nights and weekends, if necessary, to pass this bill. And I don't make that
request lightly, for, from the window where I sit, with the problems of our
country, I recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged
conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations and the harsh
judgment of history on our acts. *

*But even if we pass this bill the battle will not be over. What happened in
Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and
state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for
themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our
cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who
must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. *

*And we shall overcome. *

*As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing
racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and
the structure of our society. But a century has passed--more than 100
years--since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was
more than 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln--a great President of another
party--signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But emancipation is a
proclamation and not a fact. *

*A century has passed--more than 100 years--since equality was promised, and
yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise,
and the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come, and I tell you
that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the
eyes of man and God that it should come, and when it does, I think that day
will brighten the lives of every American. For Negroes are not the only
victims. How many white children have gone uneducated? How many white
families have lived in stark poverty? How many white lives have been scarred
by fear, because we wasted energy and our substance to maintain the barriers
of hatred and terror? *

*And so I say to all of you here and to all in the nation tonight that those
who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you
your future. This great rich, restless country can offer opportunity and
education and hope to all--all, black and white, North and South,
sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance,
disease. They are our enemies, not our fellow man, not our neighbor. *

*And these enemies too--poverty, disease and ignorance--we shall overcome. *

*Now let none of us in any section look with prideful righteousness on the
troubles in another section or the problems of our neighbors. There is
really no part of America where the promise of equality has been fully kept.
In Buffalo as well as in Birmingham, in Philadelphia as well as Selma,
Americans are struggling for the fruits of freedom. *

*This is one nation. What happens in Selma and Cincinnati is a matter of
legitimate concern to every American. But let each of us look within our own
hearts and our own communities and let each of us put our shoulder to the
wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists. As we meet here in this
peaceful historic chamber tonight, men from the South, some of whom were at
Iwo Jima, men from the North who have carried Old Glory to the far corners
of the world and who brought it back without a stain on it, men from the
east and from the west are all fighting together without regard to religion
or color or region in Vietnam. *

*Men from every region fought for us across the world 20 years ago. And now
in these common dangers, in these common sacrifices, the South made its
contribution of honor and gallantry no less than any other region in the
great republic. *

*And in some instances, a great many of them, more. And I have not the
slightest doubt that good men from everywhere in this country, from the
Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Golden Gate to the harbors along
the Atlantic, will rally now together in this cause to vindicate the freedom
of all Americans. For all of us owe this duty and I believe that all of us
will respond to it. *

*Your president makes that request of every American. *

*The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and
protests, his courage to risk safety, and even to risk his life, have
awakened the conscience of this nation. His demonstrations have been
designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change;
designed to stir reform. He has been called upon to make good the promise of
America. *

*And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it
not for his persistent bravery and his faith in American democracy? For at
the real heart of the battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the
democratic process. Equality depends, not on the force of arms or tear gas,
but depends upon the force of moral right--not on recourse to violence, but
on respect for law and order. *

*There have been many pressures upon your President and there will be others
as the days come and go. But I pledge to you tonight that we intend to fight
this battle where it should be fought--in the courts, and in the Congress,
and the hearts of men. We must preserve the right of free speech and the
right of free assembly. But the right of free speech does not carry with
it--as has been said--the right to holler fire in a crowded theatre. *

*We must preserve the right to free assembly. But free assembly does not
carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic. We do have
a right to protest. And a right to march under conditions that do not
infringe the Constitutional rights of our neighbors. And I intend to protect
all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office. *

*We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very
weapons which we seek--progress, obedience to law, and belief in American
values. In Selma, as elsewhere, we seek and pray for peace. We seek order,
we seek unity, but we will not accept the peace of stifled rights or the
order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest--for peace cannot
be purchased at the cost of liberty. *

*In Selma tonight--and we had a good day there--as in every city we are
working for a just and peaceful settlement. We must all remember after this
speech I'm making tonight, after the police and the F.B.I. and the Marshals
have all gone, and after you have promptly passed this bill, the people of
Selma and the other cities of the nation must still live and work together.
*

*And when the attention of the nation has gone elsewhere they must try to
heal the wounds and to build a new community. This cannot be easily done on
a battleground of violence as the history of the South itself shows. It is
in recognition of this that men of both races have shown such an
outstandingly impressive responsibility in recent days--last Tuesday and
again today. *

*The bill I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But
in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights
program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races,
because all Americans just must have the right to vote, and we are going to
give them that right. *

*All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship, regardless of race,
and they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of
race. *

*But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these
privileges takes much more than just legal rights. It requires a trained
mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home and the chance to find a
job and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty. *

*Of course people cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught
to read or write; if their bodies are stunted from hunger; if their sickness
goes untended; if their life is spent in hopeless poverty, just drawing a
welfare check. *

*So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we're also going to give
all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through
those gates. My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas,
in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English and I
couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to
class without breakfast and hungry. And they knew even in their youth the
pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them, but
they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes. *

*I often walked home late in the afternoon after the classes were finished
wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the
little that I knew, hoping that I might help them against the hardships that
lay ahead. And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when
you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child. *

*I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It
never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance
to help the sons and daughters of those students, and to help people like
them all over this country. But now I do have that chance. *

*And I'll let you in on a secret--I mean to use it. And I hope that you will
use it with me. *

*This is the richest, most powerful country which ever occupied this globe.
The might of past empires is little compared to ours. But I do not want to
be the president who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended
dominion. *

*I want to be the president who educated young children to the wonders of
their world. I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to
prepare them to be taxpayers instead of tax eaters. I want to be the
President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the
right of every citizen to vote in every election. I want to be the President
who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among
the people of all races, all regions and all parties. I want to be the
President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth. *

*And so, at the request of your beloved Speaker and the Senator from
Montana, the Majority Leader, the Senator from Illinois, the Minority
Leader, Mr. McCullock and other members of both parties, I came here
tonight, not as President Roosevelt came down one time in person to veto a
bonus bill; not as President Truman came down one time to urge passage of a
railroad bill, but I came down here to ask you to share this task with me.
And to share it with the people that we both work for. *

*I want this to be the Congress--Republicans and Democrats alike--which did
all these things for all these people. Beyond this great chamber--out
yonder--in fifty states are the people that we serve. Who can tell what deep
and unspoken hopes are in their hearts tonight as they sit there and listen?
We all can guess, from our own lives, how difficult they often find their
own pursuit of happiness, how many problems each little family has. They
look most of all to themselves for their future, but I think that they also
look to each of us. *

*Above the pyramid on the Great Seal of the United States it says in latin,
"God has favored our undertaking." God will not favor everything that we do.
It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help but believe that
He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin
here tonight.*

*President Lyndon B. Johnson - March 15, 1965*

 On August 6, 1965 President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act ending the
practice of administering literacy, knowledge or other tests which had been
used to keep African-Americans from registering to vote.

Racial unrest in the nation continued, however, as a major riot broke out in
the Watts section of Los Angeles on August 11, 1965, resulting in the deaths
of 34 persons and $40 million in damages.

On Dec 12, 2007 10:26 AM, Sandra Winn <winnsandra at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Here are some historical considerations when reading about voting rights,
> which leads me to believe that the previous posting may be a hoax.
>
> Voting was covered in three constitutional amendments passed the year the
> Civil War ended in 1865 and just after. The 13th outlawed slavery. The
> 14th
> stated that all blacks are given all natural rights of American citizens
> and
> the 15th in 1870 prohibited federal and state governments from refusing
> citizens the right to vote because of their race, color, or because they
> were ever a slave. It's an amendment to the constitution, which is
> permanent
> unless removed and does not require extension.
>
> I believe that Bush is referring to the Voting Rights Act. This was
> originally passed by the LBJ administration to protect African-Americans
> from unfair practices aimed to limit their registering or voting freedoms.
> Here's a great and accurate synopsis I found,
> http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/intro/intro_b.htm
>
> The VRA is a piece of legislation that has been used repeatedly to protect
> the rights of people of color of all kinds and people in poverty. The idea
> driving this legislation was to empower legally minorities and protect
> them
> from legal oppression. It's been said that it was the mechanism that
> forced
> the south to move past civil war policies even though it has been 100
> years
> since the war.
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Bill Howe

Travel to China - June 1-14, 2008 - Teachers & Health Care Professionals -
http://www.billhowe.org/China2008.htm

Web - http://www.billhowe.org
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Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands;
we have no right to assume otherwise.
If we do not falter in our duty now,
we may be able, handful that we are,
to end the racial nightmare,
and achieve our country,
and change the history of the world.

James Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time"