Letter to the Nationwide “Black Community:” Now is the Time to Maximize the Black Vote – Between the Lines

The black community has become known for its horrifically low voter turnouts. Conceding your vote is the ultimate surrender, but when the black community becomes highly engaged, through some salient issue or personality, it often represents either the margin of victory or the margin of defeat. We were the margin of victory for John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992. We were the margin of defeat for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, when he ran for California Governor in 1986. The number of votes Bradley needed was in his own backyard – in fact, in his old council district – but he took their votes for granted and they stayed home. They stayed home on Michael Dukakis in 1988 for ignoring the two million new voters Jesse Jackson brought to the process (this business about Jesse being a “black candidate” may have been true in 1984, but in 1988 Jesse registered as many poor white rural voters as he did poor urban black voters as “the rainbow” was in full effect at that time). And they stayed at home on John Kerry in 2004, after a record turnout for Al Gore in 2000, for failing to address issues important to the black community and for failing to campaign in the black community.

Fulfilling one’s individual potential requires the right to be educated, the right to provide for your family (right to work) and the right to universal suffrage (right to vote). African Americans have historically exercised only two (or one) of the three. But when you look at what have been the three things the dominate society has tried to prevent us from doing (being equal), it is working, being educated and voting. That’s the historical civil rights struggle in our nation. Fast forward to today.

There have been no more volatile periods in this nation’s Post-Slavery history than the 19th Century “Redemption Period” and the 20th Century “Segregation Period.” Both periods witnessed the retraction of both black civil rights and black voting rights. As a historical note, “Super Tuesday” used to be the first Tuesday in April when all the Southern States used to vote. It was the greatest single voter suppression and voter intimidation date for black voters. It was there that the tears and the blood of our forefathers flowed, and it is their tears and blood that will be on the soles of our shoes as we tread to the polls next week, be it in rain, in snow, in trickeration (confusion around polling places), and in suppression (closing polls early or running out of ballots). It shouldn’t matter what the condition. All that should matter is that in this time for which we’ve waited all our lives, we vote.