The right and ability to vote is the most fundamental component of freedom. It took a handful of years for white people in the colonies to secure this and other liberties from oppression; for the rest of those living in America, tyranny took a bit longer to overcome.
Today seems like the most appropriate of days to remember Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner. These three young men – two white, one black – lost their lives in the struggle to ensure voting opportunities for all. They were jailed, beaten, shot and dumped into a hole in Mississippi. It was not an isolated incident.
This most fundamental component, voting for all citizens, is a relatively new concept when it comes to acceptance and practice. The Mississippi Burning murders occurred exactly four years before I was born, while the Beatles were taking America by storm. My grandmother was born before women won the right to vote in a national election; American Indians – barely considered “people” by the United States government – were granted the right, but not the ability, to vote in 1924.
Members of the white race in America, while clinging to and boasting of their God-given Constitutional rights, have used various methods to deter non-white Americans from voting, including property ownership requirements and literacy tests. The last of these legal means, the poll tax, was banned nationally in 1966.
Make no mistake, the sentiments that created the environment that killed three young men 48 years ago are still alive. They live on in efforts to prevent not only people of color, but Americans of differing beliefs from casting their ballot. Intimidation, misinformation and politically promoted confusions about voting abound; if more Americans remembered – or were made aware – of the source of it all, perhaps it would cease to be tolerated. Perhaps if enough people took a moment to look in America’s rear-view mirror, they would see the shame that still looms largely in it… and put two and two together.
Three good young men, and countless others, have shed too much blood in this country for us to forget them now.
