“Voter suppression” are the latest in a string of false buzz words favored by the left
The local newspaper is on thin ice, losing subscribers at a record pace, but that doesn’t deter it from sensationalizing its news coverage. The front page report on Martin Luther King’s family rallying in Phoenix on his Jan. 15, birthday is a case in point. Topping the article is this absurd header, “Advocates will give voice to fight for voting rights.”
It’s an insulting farce to promote the fallacy that voting rights are restricted based on ethnicity, but the Arizona Republic has no shame. Registering to vote can be done online.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed after the Civil War ended in 1865, prohibits federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It was ratified on February 3, 1870.
American women didn’t have the right to vote until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, which was ratified in 1920, 50 years after black men were constitutionally granted voting rights. That inconvenient fact doesn’t play into the dramatization.
Voter intimidation, particularly in the south, prompted Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower to convince Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957, (Read the revealing last sentence of the first paragraph) which allowed for federal prosecution for anyone preventing others from voting.
And, of course, it was President Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all persons held as slaves would be free. This followed the devastatingly deadly Civil War fought during his presidency to end slavery.
Republican President Ulysses S. Grant was the Commanding General during the Civil War, leading the Union Army to victory against the Confederacy. “Reasons for Being a Republican,” was a speech he gave explaining his political ideology.
In 1983 Republican President Ronald Reagan signed legislation creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday.
The voting rights the King family claims to be “fighting for” disregard the fact that Barack Obama was twice elected U.S. President, VP Kamala Harris is next in line of presidential succession, and countess blacks have been elected to public office on every city, county and state level including the fifty state legislatures and hold judgeships across the nation.
This list displays the black members of the U.S. House and Senate, from 1869 to the present. Their political affiliation is listed alongside each elected official. Every elected member from 1869 through 1935, were Republicans. Unlike too many Americans today, they were historically astute and knew which party acted on their behalf and which gave lip service. The first black to serve in Congress was Republican Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi who began his service in the U.S. Senate when he was sworn in on February 25, 1870, despite efforts of democrats to block him. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the King family to mention him or those who followed in his footsteps.