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Opinion
Smoky Mountain News
If you stay home, just keep quiet I
Democracy is not a spectator sport To the Editor: Would you be able to vote if you had to pass a literacy test? Can you count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap? Can you count the number of jelly beans in a jar? These were some of the tests that were required for Black citizens prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Can you imagine the pain and trauma many people endured when trying to exercise their rights as American citizens and were denied? The late congressional Rep. John Lewis actually shed his blood in his efforts to draw attention to the fact that people of color were not allowed to vote. He was beaten, insulted and his life threatened along with many others involved in fighting for civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s. Do you take your right to vote for granted? Do you exercise that vote every time there is an election? In addition to John Lewis and others fighting for voting rights of minorities, think of the thousands of Americans who have served and died in military service defending democracy and our right to vote. I recently interviewed Payson Kennedy, who co-founded the Nantahala Outdoor Center in 1972. He was a faculty member of the University of Illinois in the 1960s. In early 1965, Kennedy took some students in a Volkswagen van to Selma, Alabama. They
officially gave them U.S. citizenship, but elections boards in Jackson and Swain counties here in the Western North Carolina mountains didn’t let members of the Eastern Band vote until 1946 — 22 years later. It finally happened because returning Native American veterans who served in World War II demanded it. Protests were led by the Steven Youngdeer American Legion Post 143 on the Qualla Boundary. Utah and New Mexico didn’t let Native Americans vote until 1962. Ludicrous. For Blacks in this country, the right to vote wasn’t really guaranteed until 1965 — 100 years after the Editor North won the Civil War and the 14th and 15th Amendments were passed. That was when the Voting Rights Act got through Congress and was signed by President Lyndon Johnson, finally outlawing literacy tests and poll taxes and blatant intimidation that was long accepted, particularly in the South. Thirty years after the Civil War — in the late 1890s — Southern Democrats were openly running as white supremacists and enthusiastically supporting violence against Blacks. In 1898 in Wilmington, N.C. — a day after the election — at least 60 Blacks were murdered and many others banished from town as the Democrats staged a bloody coup, even forc-
Scott McLeod
f you don’t vote, then just shut up. You don’t even really deserve the right to be heard. Especially when you consider the treatment many in this country endured before — and after — they earned to right to vote. Over the last several weeks our staff has written nearly a dozen stories on the passage of the 19th Amendment and the obstacles faced by those early women, Blacks and Native Americans fighting for the right to vote. All women were ignored for too long, but the battles by women of color and Native Americans to gain this most basic right continued long after the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment. If you haven’t read those stories, there is another in today’s edition or you can go to our website (www.smokymountainnews.com) and google “women’s suffrage.” It’s nearly unimaginable to me how so many Americans were disenfranchised and screwed over for so long and yet there wasn’t more violence, more upheaval. Perhaps, though, that helps explain why today it is all coming to a head, why the floodgates of anger over the treatment of minorities has come to a head. It was 1848 when the Seneca Falls, N.Y., convention for women’s rights was held. At this time there was already an organized movement to change the laws that kept women out of the ballot box and out of political life. It was 72 years later — nearly two generations given the life expectancy in those days — before the 19th Amendment was passed. For Native Americans, it was the 1924 Snyder Act that
LETTERS stayed in a housing project and every morning John Lewis, Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to them. At noon they marched to the courthouse in Selma to register Blacks to vote but they were refused. Kennedy said the speeches and marches all emphasized non-violence. They were asked to remain non-violent despite taunts and threats. Protestors today should follow their example. The marches that Payson Kennedy and his students participated in, plus the famous “Bloody Sunday” march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965, led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This act prohibited racial discrimination in voting and was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy is puzzled why people don’t vote when so many people put their lives on the line for this right. He believes our country is in a crisis today probably as bad as any other time in recent history. In a letter written days before his death to be read on the day of his funeral, John Lewis repeated something he often said: “If you see something that is not right, you must say something and you must do something.” Filmmaker Michael Moore stated: “Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s a participatory event. If we don’t participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.” When you exercise your right to vote, you’ll be doing your part to
ing the mostly white town council to resign and appointing themselves as the new aldermen (the book, Wilmington’s Lie, was released this year by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Zucchino and is both shocking in its story and gripping in its detail).
Voter registration You can visit the board of elections office in your home county or download a North Carolina voter registration form and instructions at https://dl.ncsbe.gov/voter_registration/ncvoterregform_06w.pdf. Election Day is Nov. 3.
So here we are in 2020 and the killing of unarmed Blacks by police has led to an awakening regarding the vestiges of institutional racism. Violent riots, despite what some say, don’t move anything forward. Civil protests, marches and dialogue will raise awareness but that’s about it. The ballot box is where it needs to happen. Americans of all persuasions need to vote, let the chips fall where they will, and then continue voicing their opinions on the important issues facing this country. Given the battle fought by so many to obtain voting rights, it’s almost criminal to not take this civil duty seriously. If you stay home, then stay out of the debate. (Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)
maintain our democracy. Use your right to vote or lose it. Mary A. Herr Cherokee
What should we publicly honor? To the Editor: In my opinion all plaques, markers, statues and monuments honoring those who served the Confederacy should be removed from public squares. Simply adding context or additional statuary allows the object honoring the Confederacy to remain … and that’s the problem. There is a horrific backstory connected to these statues which goes unacknowledged or unaccepted by many. Yet, in the light of historical fact, no one could support the continued public display of Confederate monuments. At the core of all things Confederate is the preservation of human enslavement. So paramount was this issue that it was enshrined in the Confederate constitution. Article 1, Section 9, states: “… no law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” It continues in Article 4, Section 3, “… the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the Territorial government(s) …” Re-read that. Let it sink in. Property in people of African descent is protected in the
foundational document of the Confederacy. Every Confederate soldier or government official would have sworn to uphold the constitution. Now, take a second look at these statutes. All who served the Confederacy in any capacity, regardless of economic status, would have pledged to protect the “right of property in negro slaves.” All Southerners knew, at its core, what the fight was about. Other rationales were contrived, such as “state’s rights” or “home and hearth” to make the call to arms more virtuous or morally respectable, something noble. And while it’s true that most Confederate soldiers did not practice enslavement, they were, nonetheless, willing to fight to preserve it. In historical reality, Confederate monuments honor those who took up arms to secure the right of white Southerners to force labor upon enslaved people who were legally designated as property, like other farm animals or equipment. That is the glaring historical truth. Do you actually want that represented on your courthouse lawn or capital square? Having Confederate ancestors, as I do, is nothing to be proud of and should certainly not me memorialized. Sadly, this history happened, and rest assured it can’t be erased. But it is imperative now that we, as Americans, ask ourselves what in our history is worthy of communication. What should we publicly honor? Faye Kennedy Whittier
