We must vote. We owe it to the people who fought for our voting rights | Opinion

It’s election time. A time when we citizens get to do a do-over. If you are not happy with the way our elected officials are taking care of business, this is your opportunity to vote them out of office. And start over again.

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It’s also a time to give serious thought to whom we elect to public office. These are the people who will lead our communities over the next two years, at least in the U.S. House.

Our privilege to vote is not to be taken for granted. People have died just to have the right to vote. I am old enough to remember the Freedom Rides into the deep South, where young volunteers — Blacks and whites — risked their lives to help Blacks register to vote. They met in poorly lit country churches, singing songs like:

“We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some d-a-a-a-a-y, Oh-o-o-o, deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day…”

Those of us who couldn’t join the Freedom Riders stayed behind and prayed and added our voices to the freedom songs:

“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round, Turn me ‘round, turn me ‘round, Ain’t gonna let nobody, turn me ‘round, I’m gonna keep on a walkin,’ keep on a talkin,’ Walkin’ into freedom land…”

Getting people registered to vote was dangerous work. Those Freedom Riders were well aware they were putting their lives on the line once they stepped inside that bus. Yet, they went willingly.

I still marvel at their courage, courage of brave young men and women to ride into dangerous territory, where some cowardly white men, wearing white sheets and white pointed hoods to hide their identities, stood ready to lynch anyone who disrupted their way of life.

But as another freedom song goes, we “fought on.” Little by little, people identified with civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, when she said, “… I am sick and tired of being sick and tired … ” of the way life was for Blacks in America. (She spoke with Malcolm X on Dec. 20, 1964, at a rally at the Williams Institutional CME Church in Harlem.)

Yet, it took the brutal attack of about 600 peaceful marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, for America to see the brutality of Alabama state troopers clubbing and spraying tear gas on their Black brothers and sisters, who simply wanted the right to vote.

The marchers, led by a young civil rights fighter named John Lewis, were attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama’s capital, to demand voting rights for Blacks. Lewis, along with several others, nearly lost their lives that day, which would become known as Bloody Sunday. Lewis would later become a highly respected U. S. congressman from Georgia.

I, along with many others, believe that march was the turning point in the voting rights fight. Five months later, on Aug. 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. The law sought to secure the right to vote for minorities throughout the country, especially in the South.

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That was then. Fast-forward to 2026, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to weaken the very law that was put in place to make sure all Americans had the privilege to vote without the fear of persecution. Because of the Court’s action, there is now limited protection against racial gerrymandering, making it harder for minority communities to challenge discriminatory election maps.

Wake up people. Let us not forget the hard-fought battles that got us to this day. Tell the young people in your family the story of Rep. John Lewis, who served more than 30 years in Congress before he died on July 17, 2020.

Tell them about James Chaney, 21, a Black civil rights fighter from Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old white anthropology student from New York City, and Michael Schwerner, 24, a white civil rights activist also from New York City. The three were part of the 1964 “Freedom Summer” voter registration project; they were killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan.

There were other young people — mainly students — who gave up their summers and had their lives threatened just so people who look like me could have the right to vote. So, parents, when you are encouraging your 18-year-old to vote, remind them of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Take them to the polls, if you must.

And tell your friends to vote. You know the ones I am talking about, the ones who say their vote doesn’t count. Remind them of John Lewis. Tell them every vote counts. The march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 was not that long ago, my friends.

While Congressman Lewis is no longer with us, some of the marchers from that day are yet alive, carrying the scars from when state troopers beat them with clubs and turned vicious dogs and powerful water hoses on them.

We owe it to those brave soldiers, those fighters for civil rights, to show up at the polls to cast our vote for the candidates of our choice.

And we owe it to ourselves.

Voting is a privilege that could be taken away from us at any given moment, if we fail to elect the right people to lead our communities and our country.

Think about it, folks. The 1960s wasn’t that long ago. Already, we have a president who is trying to convince America that he needs to be elected for a third term. If voters fall for that, I believe we’re headed for a dictatorship.

I don’t think that’s what we want for our America. Just ask the Cubans who fled their beloved country in the late 1950s why they came to America.

The choice is ours. We can ignore this wonderful privilege and sit it out when it comes to voting, or we can exercise our right as American citizens. Let’s do this, folks. Let’s think of the brave men and women who died, and others who risked their lives, the lives of their children and other family members, and even their livelihoods — simply for the right to vote.

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Like I said before — we owe it to them to exercise this American right.

And we owe it to ourselves.