By james art I need little encouragement to run to the voting booth in local and national elections. Just give me a time and place and I’ll be there as soon as possible. Traffic and long lines mean nothing to me.
As the old folks would say, “If it’s for dogcatcher, I vote.”
Sometimes I participate in early voting. I did this earlier this week and was delighted to see a friend from my college days a few steps behind me.
Other times I vote on election day. I support postal voting, but I don’t do it because I’m “old school”. I like to see everything in front of me when I vote and I like the machine to tell me that my vote has been counted.
Yes, laugh if you want, but I’ve been doing this for 52 straight years.
But I don’t laugh when I read or hear stories about black people refusing to vote. How is that possible, I ask myself?
Bear with me because I’ve written this before and I have to write it again.
Ed Pratt
I am inspired to vote by the heartbreaking sight of a time when blacks were shot, beaten, burned and hanged for voting or encouraging other blacks to vote. Those days were in my life.
That’s what I mean. I recently saw this old news clipping quoted in a social media post:
“George W. Lee, 51, Negro, shot and killed May 7, 1955, in Bezoni (Belzoni), Humphreys County, Miss., after refusing to withdraw his name from the voting list:
Lamar D. Smith, 63, Negro, shot and killed on the lawn of the Lincoln County Courthouse in Brookhaven, Miss., on August 16, 1955. Smith had encouraged others of his race to qualify as voters.
Lee was a successful businessman and minister. He could live well without fighting for the right to vote. Instead, he was among the first to register to vote in his district. He was killed by three shotgun blasts, but authorities, who wanted to write off his killing like similar murders of the time, claimed he was killed in a car accident and that the lead pellets found in Lee’s shattered jaw were dental fillings his.
FBI tests concluded that the bullets were bullets. No one has ever been tried.
Stories like this make me want to vote every time there is an election. How could I not show my respect for people like Lee?
So now I have to hear black people say they don’t feel the need or care to vote. Sometimes it’s not the winning that matters, it’s the idea that you show pride and love for people like Lee and others. Sometimes that vote says, “I will never take my ancestors for granted!”
Sometimes you hear the refrain, “Well, nothing’s going to change, why should I vote?” To that I say, there was a sustained effort by those who won the passage of the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Bills. Many of them had to hear that these desired major pieces of legislation would never pass.
It bothers me that there are now reports that black participation in early voting in Louisiana is down from the same time last election cycle. There were less than a dozen when I went. A white friend said she was amazed at the low turnout of blacks when she voted early.
In recent days there was a report that 183,000 white voters cast ballots, up from 161,000 in 2020 (I wonder how many of those were Democrats?) And there were 67,000 black voters (I wonder how many of those were Republicans) down from 89,000 in 2020.
To all voters, get out and vote. To black voters, you have an obligation to those who have gone to their graves to vote.
Early voting continues until October 29. Let everyone who can try to get there. You never know if illness, inclement weather or extraordinary family circumstances will prevent you from voting on November 5th.
Do it now. You don’t want to say, “I wish I could vote.”
I have written this so many times in the past. But the memories of people like George W. Lee, Lamar Smith and others like them will keep me going. My wish is to never have to do that again.