Black Americans Have Voting Rights - They Need Jobs and Education

President and Mrs. Obama and President and Mrs. George W. Bush led a hundred lawmakers from both parties today in the centerpiece of a long weekend of events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the seminal civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. President Obama gave remarks at the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, where hundreds of protesters demanding equal rights for black voters met the billy clubs of state police and local vigilantes 50 years ago to block the activists' march to the state capital of Montgomery. Representative John Lewis, who was among those beaten on March 7, 1965, led the congressional delegation Saturday in his annual walk across the bridge to remember the brutal episode, which led directly to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 later that year. ~~~~~ "There were a number of high points in the civil rights movement, but the Selma-to- Montgomery march is certainly at the very top. It was the defining moment," Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions said Friday. "People were systematically denied the right to vote, and that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. It was a huge thing. I always recommend to my colleagues to take the trip, and they come back always praising [it]." Representative Eliot Engel of New York said : "Fifty years ago, I was just a teenager, and I remember this very vividly. It really struck a cord for those of us who were in New York and never really saw anything like this -- it really struck a cord that these were people really battling for freedom. So to actually be here, in the place where it all happened 50 years later, it's almost surreal." Of the three people killed in the Selma march, two were white volunteers from the North. One white veteran of the Selma march said today that as a 17-year-old, he was dumbfounded to arrive in Selma and find that it was like a foreign country - he had never experienced the racial divide that existed in Alabama. And, indeed, it was that televised shock of police with dogs and nightsticks that moved America to vow to put an and to segregation and its loathesome practices. ~~~~~ White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday that the President "doesn’t view his speech in Selma as an opportunity to lay out additional policy proposals or to make specific prescriptions about the legislative process. This will be an opportunity for the President to look back on the events of 50 years ago, talk about how it shapes the identity of this country and how it should inspire the next generation of Americans to engage at the community level to bring about the kind of change they want to see in their country." The President said "Much has changed in the last 50 years." He called out the progress of blacks, women, disabled, latinos, asians, and gays, saying "the march is not over yet....Change depends on our actions, on our attitudes." ~~~~~ But away from the celebration in Selma, for me it was Bloomberg that got it right in understanding how Selma resonates today. The Bloomberg essay noted that in the era leading up to Bloody Sunday, Selma was "racially mixed, though far from integrated." The 1960 census showed that Selma had 28,385 residents equally split between black and white. The town has shrunk to a population of 19,912 in 2013, and many of Selma's white residents have left -- four in five residents are black. More than in 1960, Selma is a place of poverty. The median household income for the years 2009 to 2013 was $22,478 -- about one-half of Alabama’s median household income - and 42% of Selma residents lived below the poverty line. And Selma is located in a county where the unemployment rate is 13.7% and the underemployment rate is 29.8%.~~~~~ Bloomberg notes that "many people who live or work in Selma today say it’s not enough to be a symbol for the country; they’re still fighting the aftershocks of what happened there so many years ago and they want some help for themselves.Voting rights gave them some dignity and standing and helped them to elect two black mayors, black representation in the US Congress, and a black President. But overall, white flight, cash-strapped schools, and the changing economy have left this Black Belt city struggling." Here are some of the Selma stories told by Bloomberg.~~~~~ US Representative Terri Sewell, Alabama’s first elected black congresswoman, grew up in Selma, was the first black valedictorian at Selma High School, went to Princeton University and Harvard Law, became a lawyer, and was elected to the House of Representatives in 2010 to a district that covers Selma. “Selma is now,” said Sewell. “It is relevant for our fight for human rights and social justice around the world. What the people of Selma need are better opportunities. It’s not enough that the world come and walk across the bridge." ~~~~~ James Perkins, Selma’s first black mayor calls for expanding the Interstate system in a way that drives traffic to the city, outside funding for tax incentives for companies to move to the area, more money for early college education in area high schools, and millions of dollars to fulfill a Clinton administration vision for a voting-rights tourism center including a high-tech theater, parking, staffing, and equipment. Perkins says : “The United States of America owes Selma. The sacrifices that were made here to ensure that a Cory Booker could sit in the Senate, and to ensure that a Barack Obama could be President of the United States or a James Perkins could become mayor of this city, that ground-zero experience took place right here in Selma, Alabama. If this government has the heart to rebuild Iraq and other foreign lands, it should do no less for Selma. That’s where I’m coming from.” ~~~~~ “Things obviously are better” for blacks today than they were in 1965, in Selma and the country as a whole, said Johnny Crear, 78, who was working at Good Samaritan Hospital on Bloody Sunday as the wounded poured in. He later became the hospital’s administrator. Crear and his wife had five children, and stayed put. “Selma, Alabama, was the place for us to raise our children and I sincerely doubt we could have had the success” anyplace else." All five of their children are college graduates; four are engineers and one a physical therapist. Two stayed in Alabama. None stayed in Selma. “Our children have had to in many instances leave the area to find employment,” Crear said. "I don't blame the civil rights movement. If you can't find a job, you have to go elsewhere. That's just a given. It’s also a given that last summer’s police killing of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson stirred up painful memories in Selma," but Crear fears younger blacks are missing the most important lesson of the 1960s. “Go and vote,” he said. “Change comes about when citizens participate in their government. That’s when their voice gets heard. History does repeat itself.” ~~~~~ Joanne Bland, 61, grew up in the George Washington Carver Homes public housing across from Brown Chapel, a staging area for the protests. She was 11 when she joined the marchers on Bloody Sunday. Bland left Selma in 1973, became an Army legal specialist and lived in Germany before being reassigned back in the US. She planned to move to New York, but went home to visit family. She stayed in Selma and raised a relative’s son as her own. He’s in his thirties now, she said, a detective in Birmingham. Selma’s story, she said, motivated him to become a policeman “because he knew the problems in the community. Blacks all over the country are still struggling for fair treatment by police and opportunities. Ferguson highlights the problem. Ferguson brought to light that the struggle still continues.” ~~~~~ Sadie Moss, 73, is Bland’s half-sister. She was on her way to the bridge on Bloody Sunday when she saw horses chasing the screaming marchers back. Her parents had picked cotton for a living. She said she tried it and found the labor so hard and the payoff so poor that she vowed to find another path. Moss, a Selma public-school teacher, now runs the McRae-Gaines Learning Center, a private center that sprang from the civil-rights movements and was envisioned to help prepare its preschool students for school. It once catered to middle-class blacks; increasingly, it provides a structure for children whose parents are on welfare. Many of the parents of the school’s 70 students can’t pay a $330 monthly tuition, she said, adding : “Living in Selma is no excuse for us to allow our children to be deprived of the very best education and the broadest possible opportunities.” ~~~~~ Dear readers, as President Obama said, much has changed in the 50 years since Selma. What black Americans, and all poor Americans, need is help to improve their education and vocational skills. And they need jobs. No speech or celebration can replace those basic requirements. Only education and jobs will bring black and other Americans still left behind into mainstream America.