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The Bridge to the Ballot

Page history last edited by Mr. Hengsterman 2 years, 10 months ago

 

 

 

The Bridge to the Ballot [1963-1968]

Throughout March of 1965, a group of demonstrators faced violence as they attempted to march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama,

to demand the right to vote for black people. that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement.

 

 

Image result for selma march

 

 

 

 

Selma to Montgomery March (March 25, 1965) Martin Luther King Jr. leads 54-mile march from Selma to the Montgomery to support black voter registration.

 

Related image

 

 

HTS: The 15th Amendment  (Ratified 1870)  The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

 

 

Why start at Selma? Only 2% of  eligible African Americans in Selma were registered to vote.

 

According to a 1961 Civil Rights Commission report, only 130 of 15,115 eligible Dallas County Blacks were registered to vote. The situation was even worse in neighboring Wilcox and Lowndes counties. There were virtually no Blacks on the voting rolls in these rural counties that were roughly 80 percent Black. Ironically, in some Alabama counties, more than 100% of the eligible white population was registered. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Viola  Liuzzo (April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan. In March 1965 Liuzzo, then a housewife and mother of 5 with a history of local activism, heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr and traveled from Detroit, Michigan to Selma, Alabama in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Liuzzo participated in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot dead by members of the Ku Klux Klan. She was 39 years old.

 

One of the four Klansmen in the car from which the shots were fired was Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant Gary Rowe.Rowe testified against the shooters and was moved and given an assumed name by the FBI. The FBI later leaked what were purported to be salacious details about Liuzzo which were never proved or substantiated in any way.

 

In addition to other honors, Liuzzo's name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama created by Maya Lin.

 

 

The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African-American revolutionary socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Founded in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale on October 15, 1966, the organization initially set forth a doctrine calling primarily for the protection of African-American neighborhoods from police brutality.The leaders of the organization espoused socialist and Marxist doctrines; however, the Party's early black nationalist reputation attracted a diverse membership.The Black Panther Party's objectives and philosophy expanded and evolved rapidly during the party's existence, making ideological consensus within the party difficult to achieve, and causing some prominent members to openly disagree with the views of the leaders.

 

 

The ten-point platform was important for the Black Panther Party because it laid out the "physical needs and all the philosophical principles" they expected and that could be understood by everyone. When Huey Newton talked about the platform, he stated that these things were not something new but something that "black people have been voicing all along for over 100 years since the Emancipation Proclamation and even before that." This platform was essential to the party, because it allowed for them to state their wants, needs, and beliefs that people could read and easily understand. 

 

 

The Black Panther Party 10 Point Plan - What We Want Now!

#1 We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

 

#2 We want full employment for our people.

 

#3 We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed communities.

 

#4 We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

 

#5 We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

 

#6 We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.

 

#7 We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.

 

#8 We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

 

#9 We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

 

#10 We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

 

 

 

 

"When I say fight for independence right here, I don't mean any non violent fight or 
turn the other cheek fight.  Those days are gone, the days are over"
Malcolm X

 

March 15th 1965

[As delivered in person before a joint session at 9:02 p.m. to an audience of 70 million]

 

And We Shall Overcome”: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Special Message to Congress

 

 Although the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race, by 1957 only 20 percent of eligible African Americans voted, due in part to intimidation and discriminatory state requirements such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Despite the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on race, religion, national origin, or sex, efforts to register African Americans as voters in the South were stymied.

 

In 1965, following the murder of a voting rights activist by an Alabama sheriff’s deputy and the subsequent attack by state troopers on a massive protest march in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson pressed Congress in the following speech to pass a voting rights bill with teeth. As Majority Leader of the Senate, Johnson had helped weaken the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

 

When he assumed the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, however, Johnson called on Americans “to eliminate from this nation every trace of discrimination and oppression that is based upon race or color,” and in the following speech adopted the “We Shall Overcome” slogan of civil rights activists. His rhetoric and subsequent efforts broke with past presidential precedents of opposition to or lukewarm support for strong civil rights legislation. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law on August 6.

 

 

 

 

Image result for LBJ signs voting rights act of 1965

 

 

Voting Rights Act of 1965 (August 6, 1965) Legislation still did not address the 15th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. Literacy tests unlawful if less than 50% of all voting-age citizens were registered. If so, African Americans could be enrolled whether or not they could read. b. If local registrars would not enroll African Americans, the president could send federal examiners who would. This gave teeth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - As a result, 740,00 African Americans registered to vote in three years.

 

 

On 6 August, in the presence of King and other civil rights leaders, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 

Recalling ‘‘the outrage of Selma,’’ Johnson called the right to vote ‘‘the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men’’

 

 

In his annual address to SCLC a few days later, King noted that...

 

 

Montgomery led to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960

 

Birmingham inspired the Civil Rights Act of 1964

 

Selma produced the voting rights legislation of 1965

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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