As we enjoy the bright days of summer, we should take time to reflect on two important anniversaries. Fifty years ago, this summer, America and the world watched one of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement unfold. And it was ninety-five years ago that Texas took a large step forward for women. Both anniversaries concern a right we as Texans hold dear: the right to vote, through which we express our desires and priorities as citizens.

In 1964, scores of young people, black and white, energized with a spirit of racial justice converged on the state of Mississippi. They had journeyed there to help register African-Americans to vote. That season of heroism and insurmountable determination became known as the Freedom Summer. Only a small fraction of eligible African-Americans in the state were registered. In Mississippi, as in other places across the country, an entrenched establishment resisted allowing racial diversity to express its voice through the political process.

But soon after the summer began, tragedy ensued. Late that June, three volunteers disappeared after first being arrested by local police: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. On August 4, 1964, their bodies were found. They had been murdered by people who were willing to kill to prevent African-Americans from voting. But the young men had not died in vain. Outrage over their deaths ultimately led to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The right of women to vote was itself the culmination of a long struggle. Since our country’s birth, women have fought to have their voices heard in the halls of power. Women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery were often discussed together. Indeed, Frederick Douglass was among the earliest and most prominent male supporters. In the last part of the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony wrote the text of a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. It would not be until 1919, though, that Congress finally proposed it to the states. On June 28, 1919, Texas became the ninth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

Honoring these two anniversaries allows us to measure the great strides we have made. Were it not for the political ripples that spread out from the Freedom Summer, we would not have known the great vision and leadership of a Barbara Jordan or a Mickey Leland. Had brave and tireless women not demanded the right to vote, we Texans would never have had trailblazers like Irma Rangel, Ann Richards, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Today, though, many Texans face some of the same challenges that the Voting Rights Act and women’s suffrage sought to remedy. Soon, a federal court in Corpus Christi, TX, will consider whether Texas’ restrictive voter ID law, passed in 2011, violates the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Previously, a panel of federal judges in Washington, D.C., determined that implementation of Texas’ voter ID law would result in a discriminatory impact on minority voters, while noting during the trial that women whose last names had been changed through marriage or divorce could be disproportionately harmed, as well.

Whether the Voting Rights Act will continue to provide Texans with the protections it was meant to assure hinges on the outcome of that trial. It is sobering to consider that lives were lost toward a cause that may eventually be rendered hollow.

Our state and our nation are stronger when all of our voices – regardless of race, gender or economic stature – are included in political dialogue. Speaking our priorities through our votes assures public accountability in education, infrastructure investment and an economy that works for all Texans, not just a select few.

As we mark the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer and the efforts of those who risked their lives in order to guarantee each of us the precious right to vote, let us take a moment to consider their work. And this November, let us honor the memory of those who fought to assure that we were granted our most sacred of Constitutional privileges by making our voices heard at the ballot box. Remaining silent by failing to vote does them a disservice and carries tremendous consequences.

Fifty-years-ago I could not enter the public library in my southern segregated hometown of Lexington, MS. Nor could I attend a high school, the facility built for the Negro students who wished to excel was called, Lexington Attendance Center. There were many basic access problems for the Negro during my childhood. Not to be thwarted by what I was forbade by laws and practices from receiving, my village lead by my parents said, “Keep studying, keep trying and we will work to make changes for you.”

Fifty-years-ago, of the stores that we were allowed to patronize, we were only allowed to hold the garment in front of our bodies, never allowed to try-on the garment. So, instead, my mother made her children’s and other females in the village their clothing. Therefore, I learned to select fabric, patterns, how to measure all parts of the body so that the garment would be a customized design and fit. Hence, my mother became to “go to” seamstress in the neighborhood.

Some years ago, while attending my oldest brother’s funeral, a lady approached me inquiring if I was Ethel’s daughter. Ethel is my mother’s name. I said, “yes”. She said, “You wouldn’t remember me. You were very young. (I look like my mother). But Ethel made all my family’s clothes.” Proudly she proclaimed while smiling, “Ethel could take scraps of different fabrics, put them together and make all of us look good.” I smiled and told her thanks, remembering how I would help my mother with the gathering, hemming and cutting of the fabric then ironing and preparing the garments for pick-up. (She was teaching me business and service in a segregated era. I use those lesions today).

Institutionalized racism was brutal and embedded in it required a resilience that mandated vital strength, courage, hope and faith that through work, effort and presentence, things would be better for the next generation. Hope and trust in the next generation is that which the folks in my village were working toward. Those freedom fighter volunteers believed that we could make an impact on the world. They had taken the risks to allow freedom meetings to be held in their homes and churches to advance the cause and saturate the thirst for a better life. In my town it was Epworth AME Church. It was the store front business on Beal Street in my hometown where the Freedom Democratic Party met.

Fannie Lou Hammer, Robert G. Clark, Medgar Evers and others would come and plan. My mother would attend the meetings offering her ideas and services and she would allow me to attend the meetings and make copies and distribute them to the leaders and volunteers. It was Saints Junior College, the African American controlled church school operated by the Church of God in Christ that made its space available for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to come, speak and raise money for the civil rights movement. I was provided an opportunity to serve and to have had a chance to talk with Dr. King as a teenager. The white lady however, Mrs. Hazel Brandon Smith, lost her newspaper business because she allowed Dr. King to stay in her guesthouse.

The white merchants subsequently, boycotted her paper refusing to place advertisement in it and she went bankrupt.
My mother would say, “I want a better life for my 10 children so that they can have access to broader opportunities beyond the farm and what we do at home.”

Moving forward, we watched the result of our work coming to pass as the civil rights legislation was authorized by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. I witness my mother crying when President Johnson signed and spoke about the legislation he had signed. “The hope that reigns from the law is a reality, now we must change the hearts of men”, she said. Well, that is taking some more time.

Holding the Civil Rights Summit in Austin is apropos as it was President Johnson who seized the power of his office to advance the nation among racial matters. In his actions, he acknowledged that the Democratic Party had lost the south for the residuals of slavery were entrenched in the economic wealth of 13 slaves states. The republican party issued a statement about the Civil Rights Summit saying, “Embedded in the Republican Party’s DNA is a history of championing civil rights. What began with its founding by abolitionists and continued through its fight for the passage of the Civil Rights Act, today lives on in leading the charge for the civil rights issue of our time: equal access to a quality education.” – Orlando Watson, RNC Communications Director for Black Media.

Regardless of how much we hope for smooth sailing post civil rights legislation passage, changing the hearts of men is a difficult and stringent process. We are living in a world were the vestiges of the past lingers and it is holding on tighter as the opposing side is fearful of losses that it may endure.

Subsequently, new laws and court cases rise to the top such as the U.S. Supreme Court decision that questions the key provision of the 1964 Voting Rights Act which was a legacy piece of legislation during the Johnson presidency that removed restrictions for African American voters that aimed to enforce the 15th Amendment of the US Constitution.

Therefore, the children of the freedom fighters and their children still has work to do, should they choose to be able to utilize the benefits gained 50 years ago. We make the decisions about the kind of world we choose to live in based upon our actions. We likewise, make the decision to leave the kind of world for future generations based upon what we do today.

May God bless and I will see you next week.