The year 2005 marks the anniversary of numerous events in the progress of black people and the movement for voting rights and voter education. Only forty years ago, some black people were demanding the right to take part in an election, but somewhere along the way it seems the struggles of the era have been forgotten or the conflicts had no meanings.
The dignity and self respect that developed from the struggles of the sixties, in many instances, have evaporated.
The voting rights and voter registration movement was self-motivated and energetic, with many cities electing African-American mayors and other officials. Forty years ago, Fannie Lou Hamer got “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” so she and other members of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party set out to integrate the Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Las Vegas.
In 1965, the murder of voting-rights activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Earl Chaney gained national attention.
Also, we remember Bloody Sunday, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. In 1965, 15,000 blacks were eligible to vote in Selma but only 355 were registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), led by Stokley Carmichael and John Lewis, had been working in Selma to increase black voter rolls for over a year. Eventually, they invited the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), led by Dr. Martin Luther King, and the Nation of Islam’s Malcolm X to help in the effort.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. This piece of legislation encouraged thousands across the nation to surge to the polls seeking ways to correct the injustices that had been a way of life for decades.
Soon, many of the nation’s larger cities began electing black mayors. In 1967, Carl Stokes became the mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, the eighth-largest city in the U.S. He was the first African-American mayor of a major U.S. city.
In 1973, Tom Bradley became Los Angeles’ first African-American mayor and was later re-elected four times. In Chicago, Harold Washington defeated Mayor Jane Byrne in 1983 and was re-elected in 1987.
Locally, we must thank so many who sacrificed so much for residents of the St. Louis area to gain many civil and human rights. The list begins with Ernest and DeVerne Calloway. In 1959 Ernest Calloway orchestrated the campaign of the Rev. John J. Hicks, who became the first black elected to the St. Louis Board of Education, and in 1960 he spearheaded the crusade of Theodore McNeal, who became the first black elected to the Missouri Senate. In 1962, DeVerne Calloway became the first black woman elected to the Missouri Legislature when she won a seat on the House of Representatives.
In April 1993, Freeman Bosley Jr. became the first African-American mayor of St. Louis and, in 1997, after a hard-fought race, former St. Louis Police Chief Clarence Harmon defeated incumbent Mayor Bosley.
While other cities are electing black mayors, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and Cleveland are reversing the trend. Is it voter apathy, mis-education or lack of pride?
The nation has 532 African-American mayors. Three of the most volatile battlegrounds of the voting rights movement, Jackson, Mississippi, Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, all have black mayors. Mississippi counts 69 black mayors, Alabama has 44, and Illinois lists 21. Missouri has 22, but St. Louis is not included in that number. Why? Apparently some African Americans in St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and Cleveland do not think that blacks can lead and have no faith in their own.
I can be reached by fax at 837-3369 or by e-mail at: HYPERLINK “berhay@swbell.net” berhay@swbell.net.