I will Vote
A poem plus commentary.
Our only hope is to control the vote.
Medgar Evers- Civil and Voting Rights Activist
Today my wife and I exercised our right to vote. A privilege denied to African Americans for decades before the Voting Rights Act was passed. I thought about the blood spilled so that my children and I can do something so simple-vote.
It’s a right some take for granted because it’s always been there. I am too young to remember the fights, marches, and protests of the sixties. However, it’s not lost on me the cost paid to vote if I so chose. My parents are products of Jim Crow Mississippi, and they told the stories of how crosses were burned on the lawns of their friends.
My mother told me about Herbert Lee, a black man shot to death by E.H Hurst, a Mississippi State legislator. Lee was involved with the SNCC and attempting to register people to vote. His actions angered Hurst, who lied about the encounter and was acquitted by an all-white jury.
I didn’t know much about Medgar Evers until I went to college. However, his heroic efforts with the NAACP are inspirational. In 1963, he was shot in the driveway of his home as his young children and wife watched. Simon Delay Beckwith, the man who murdered Medgar, was set free after two hung juries. However, justice was served in 1994 when he was sentenced…
