Martin Luther King’s “Gives Us the Ballot” speech at the Prayer Pilgrimage of Freedom was an important address in 1957 and still is important today. The speech begins with the reference to the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. the Board of Ed. and how it was strongly opposed, especially by those in the South. King discusses two main issues that African Americans still need in order to thrive in the United States, voting and leadership. Martin Luther King lists what exactly is needed from leadership; leadership from the federal government, from all three branches, leadership from white Northern liberals, leadership from white Southern moderates and leadership from the Black community.
From leadership, King goes forth to discuss Christian morals and Biblical allusions and also how we, as a society, can grow from being oppressed and taken advantage of one another to being a brotherhood of humanity. One important issue that King discusses early on this speech is voting. King stated that “The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition. And so our most urgent request… is to give use the right to vote.” Voting is one of the most fundamental parts of the democratic process and King wants the federal government to grant that freedom to the African American community. King also repeats the phrase “Give us the ballot” six times, each time with a different declaration of fighting against the systematic racism and going towards equality and freedom.
A contemporary text to go with King’s need to fight for the ballot is a Washington Post Article, “Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly,” by Sari Horwitz. This article discusses how the adoption of voter ID laws have hindered the ability for citizens to vote, especially those of an ethnic minority, a low socioeconomic class and those who are elderly. Out of the states that took up this law, most of them are Southern states. These are the same states that fought against the Civil Rights Movement and the laws that accompanied it. These laws are basically the modern day polling tax and literacy tests that African Americans confronted after slavery until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. From the article, it appears that the fight and plead started by King lives on to this day.
Questions
What can be done to open the ballot freely to all citizens?
Can we finally carry out MLK’s plan and use the ballot to end the problems of systematic racism?
Sources:
| King, Martin Luther Jr. “Give Us the Ballot.” Washington DC (1957) King Encyclopedia, Stanford University. |
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html
The parallels you drew between modern voter ID laws and the anti African American voting rights laws of Dr.king’s time are actually really interesting to think about. Looking at the evidence given in the article you mentioned and elsewhere in support of the fact that these laws disportionately and deliberately target minorities, I can’t help draw the same parallels in my head as well. Another interesting thing to possibly look at would be the state of civil and political rights in those same areas as well. In his speech, Dr.king makes a point of tying the advancement of civil rights with black suffrage. And looking at those same states where voter ID laws have taken hold, we can often observe the passing of other laws that are unfavorable to the minority groups affected by these voting laws. This seems to be fairly consistent with the idea that in the absence of any laws that empower minority groups to strike down, through voting, laws that unfairly target them, the cause of civil liberty for all will be severely hindered. As you said, this seems to give us the impression that there indeed are many similarities between the political problems of Dr.king’s time and our own’s.
I think that you have a very interesting take on Martin Luther King’s speech, and did a great job narrowing in on where specific elements of his message can be seen in modern day America. You address how the inequalities in the voting system that King speaks out against are still evident in our voting system today, specifically how there are restrictions created by some groups to disbar others from voter registration. I found the correlation you noted between Photo ID availability and the pre- Civil Rights Act voting restrictions of the South to be very logical. I would also like to add another example to your argument of the remaining presence of voter discrimination is the use of the Crosscheck system by many states on election day. The system was originally invented to prohibit the same person from voting multiple times in several states by cross-checking the names on the lists to see if there are ones that match up. But, this power is being abused because the people that run Crosscheck are using it to look for names common to minorities and try and prohibit them from voting. Both your example of photo ID discrimination and this example of the targeting by Crosscheck, it is clearly evident that as you stated in your post, King’s discussion of voting inequalities is still completely relevant in America today.
https://www.facebook.com/GregPalastInvestigates. “Jim Crow Returns.”
Al Jazeera America. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.