Looking Back While Thinking Ahead To November 4, 2020

In June 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a poignant editorial to the New York​ Amsterdam News asking for the immediate passage of the voting rights bill. The bill had been passed by the US Senate by not yet by the House of Representatives. The House eventually passed the Voting Rights Bill. So on August 6, 1965, The Voting Rights Bill was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson with Dr. King and several civil rights activists in attendance​. Today, 55 years later to celebrate ELECTION DAY 2020, I will read the letter that King wrote along with a brief note on the bill. Remembering that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution which was ratified in 1870 which supposedly gave the freed African Americans the vote in this nation had been virtually ignored for nearly a century in this nation. In 2020, it is no longer let my people vote as Dr. King implored in 1965. Now, the mantra​ has moved to literally beg African Americans to come to use that sacred right of the vote. On November 3, 2020, Black people are being begged literally to come out and vote as if their lives depend on it. Yet, the spirit of Dr. King’s final dream of reparations as quid pro quo for that vote is being ignored or castigated by our African American leadership.