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Harry Belafonte, Stevie Wonder Speak/Sing Out for Voting
Rights
40th Anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: Thousands
March to Keep the Vote Alive
NAACP Legal Defense Fund Responds to Supreme Court Nominee
Roberts Push to Limit Voting Rights Act
SNCC Activist Ekwueme Michael Thelwell: "People Fought,
Died And Bled for the Right to Vote"
Harry Belafonte, Stevie Wonder Speak/Sing Out for
Voting Rights
World renowned performers Harry Belefonte and Stevie Wonder
speak at the Keep the Vote Alive march commemorating the 40th
anniversary for the Voting Rights Act. [includes rush
transcript]
Renowned Performers Harry Belefonte and Stevie Wonder attended
the Keep the Vote Alive March this past Saturday in Atlanta,
Georgia. The march commemorated the 40th anniversary of the
historic signing of the Voting Rights Act. Organizers also
called for Congress and President Bush to extend key provisions
of the law which expire in 2007.
- Harry Belefonte, performer and activist
40th Anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: Thousands
March to Keep the Vote Alive
Tens of thousands gathered in Atlanta, Georgia this past
weekend for the Keep the Vote Alive March. The march commemorated
the 40th anniversary of the historic 1965 signing of the Voting
Rights act and called for the Congress and the President to
extend key provisions of the law which expire in 2007. [includes
rush
transcript]
On Saturday, tens of thousands gathered from around the
country to attend the Keep the Vote Alive march in Atlanta
Georgia, which commemorated the 40th anniversary of the signing
of the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The march was led by Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder of the
Rainbow/PUSH coalition, and Bruce Gordon, the new president
of the NAACP. Organizers said that their goal was not just
to remember the historic signing of the act but to push for
Congress and President Bush to extend key provisions of the
law which expire in 2007.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on
August 6th 1965. The law was designed to reverse years of
African-American disenfranchisement in this country. Despite
the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution,
which had given Black men and women the right to vote, southern
voter registration boards used poll taxes, literacy tests,
and other bureaucratic impediments to deny African Americans
their legal rights. Southern blacks also risked harassment,
intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when
they tried to register or vote. The Voting Rights Act grew
out of public protest, which culminated in the Selma to Montgomery
marches of 1965. At the first of these three marches--known
as Bloody Sunday--state troopers attacked the peaceful demonstrators
with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips on the Edmund Pettus
bridge in Selma, Alabama.
The Voting Rights Act was signed later that year and empowered
the federal government to oversee voter registration and elections
in counties that had used tests to determine voter eligibility
or where registration or turnout had been less than 50% percent
in the 1964 presidential election. The act also banned discriminatory
literacy tests and expanded voting rights for non-English
speaking Americans. At the time the law was enacted, there
were three black members of Congress. Today there are forty-three.
There are also twenty-five Latino House members and one Latino
Senators compared with five members of Congress in 1965.
We hear from some of the speakers who who spoke at the march.
- Rep. John Lewis, (D-GA). He was a survivor of the Bloody
Sunday march
- Rep. Cynthia McKinney, (D-GA)
- Rep. Charlie Rangel, (D-NY)
NAACP Legal Defense Fund Responds to Supreme Court
Nominee Roberts Push to Limit Voting Rights Act
Newly released documents show that Supreme Court nominee
John Roberts argued strongly against strengthening the Act
in 1982 when he served as an aide in Ronald Reagan’s
Justice Department. We speak with the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund about the history and future of voting rights. [includes
rush
transcript]
The 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act comes amid
the recent release of memos written by Supreme Court Justice
nominee John Roberts from his days as an aide in Ronald Reagan’s
Justice Department. At the time, the House had overwhelmingly
passed new provisions strengthening the Voting Rights Act.
The memos reveal that Roberts strongly advocated a policy
that would curtail the reach of the law. The policy would
have barred only voting rules that intentionally discriminated
as opposed to barring rules that have a discriminatory effect.
This news is especially important as some key sections of
the Voting Rights Act are set to expire in 2007.
SNCC Activist Ekwueme Michael Thelwell: "People
Fought, Died And Bled for the Right to Vote"
Former field secretary of SNCC, professor Ekwueme Michael
Thelwell speaks on the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights
Act at the Grassroots Radio Conference in Northampton, Massachusetts.
He discusses today's struggle around strengthening provisions
to the act and the role of grassroots media. [includes rush
transcript]
On Saturday, the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights
Act, Amy Goodman spoke with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, the
Jamaican-born novelist and Professor of Afro American studies
at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was also the
former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). While working for SNCC in Washington DC,
Thelwell recruited volunteers for the 1964 Freedom Summer
campaign in Mississippi, which sent volunteers into the state
to register African-American voters.
Thelwell's many accomplishments include his publication “Ready
for Revolution,” a compilation of the memoirs of Stokely
Carmichael, (Kwame Toure) chair of SNCC and honorary prime
minister of the Black Panther Party. Thelwell is also the
author of the novel, “The Harder They Come.” Amy
Goodman interviewed Thelwell at the 10th annual Grassroots
Radio Conference, attended by hundreds of media activists
from across the country.
- Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Professor of Afro-American
studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Former
Field Secretary of SNCC.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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