Edmund Pettus moment

There is no Edmund Pettus Bridge in Chicago, but there should be. Some might not recognize the name of the bridge, but it is central to what Feb. 2, 2010 is all about.

It was the spring of 1965, and President Lyndon Baines Johnson was moving quickly to get his agenda through Congress. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was still very fresh in the minds of Americans, and Johnson, as shrewd a politician as ever sat in the Oval Office, had decided to seize the opportunity presented by the shock of Kennedy's murder.

Many Black Americans (we preferred Negro at the time) were critical of Johnson for not moving fast enough. They wanted a piece of legislation – what became known as the Voting Rights Act – approved quickly. Protest marches across the nation, but more specifically in the South, had become almost daily exercises.

The forces in opposition to that legislation, many of them southern Democrats, would not go away quietly. They felt strongly about continuing a way of life that had existed for centuries.

At the Edmund Pettus Bridge, on the way to Selma, Alabama, marchers were peacefully but resolutely marching to tell those forces that they were wrong, and that they had been wrong, and that they would have to become right.

John Lewis, now congressman from Georgia, was among those marchers. A young man full of energy and convinced that his presence would make a difference, he helped lead the march. He knew how virulent the opposition was, and he recognized that there was danger, but he stepped forward, locked arms with his fellow marchers, and headed into Selma.

Instead, those forces, which included law enforcement agencies, set upon the unarmed marchers and beat them with billy clubs, sticks, hands and choked them with tear gas.

They left many of the marchers – including Lewis – bloodied, some unconscious, and some critically injured. It was called “Bloody Sunday.”

It became one of the turning points of the Civil Rights Movement, and it served to spur Johnson to faster action.

Two days later, another protest march in Selma crossed the same bridge. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this time led the march. The marchers were again blocked on their path to Selma by forces in opposition.

Dr. King, who abhorred violence, backed off in the face of even more bloodshed. The point had been made, and the continued spilling of blood would not make it any more poignantly.

Later that year, Johnson got the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Congress, and Dr. King was there when he signed it into law.

The right to vote became bigger than a southern sheriff, or a southern politicians, or northern apologists. The right to vote had been paid for in blood, right there on network television and in the nation's newspapers, for all to see.

We often forget Edmund Pettus. For some, it happened so far away and so long ago.

Some of us cannot remember when we could not vote and so we take it for granted.

We allow bad weather, long lines or underwhelming candidates keep us from the polls.

We reason that since we banded together and elected a Black president, our voting duties are over for a lifetime, or at least for a couple of election cycles. Some of us are still basking in the euphoria of Nov. 4, 2008, as if there are no more battles to be waged and won.

But on February 2, 2010, there is another opportunity to go to the polls. Illinois voters are not restricted by poll taxes, literacy tests, or property owner requirements. But there are other obstacles; capricious restrictions that get ballots challenged and dismissed, tossing away votes like pieces of confetti.

That is why we must be vigilant, be active, and be ever aware of just how precious this right to vote is. It cannot be taken for granted, because, as we’ve seen, it can be challenged, it can be abrogated, it can be deferred.

No, we don’t have an Edmund Pettus Bridge in Chicago. But we have many scenes of protest marches here, some which became violent. Some where the opposition was just as sure of their right to be wrong as the marchers were of their right to correct the wrong.

We don’t have to reach back in history to conjure up images of voting discrepancies. Some of us can point back to Nov. 4, 2008 and tell stories of machines mysteriously not working in Black wards, or election judges challenging ballots, or admonitions of voters being turned away because they wore Obama paraphernalia to the polls.

There is no excuse to stay away from the polls. You not only owe it to those heroes who risked their lives securing the right, but you owe it to your children, and their children, so they can see that they, too, can make a change.

Your Edmund Pettus moment is Feb. 2, 2010. Don’t waste it.

Lou Ransom is executive editor of the Chicago Defender.