' I'm tired of being sick and tired'

Fannie Lou Hamer

“I'm tired of being sick and tired." 
Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights activist from Mississippi

Life has a sneaky way of poking people in the eye when they least expect it. During this 2016 election season Americans have been thrown into another guerrilla fight, in which bitchy wisecracking, outright lying and rolling eyes are weapons of choice. Experienced and novice politicians still have not learned how to run for president like adults.  They have not learned to hire a civil tongue when criticizing their rivals. Here in America presidential elections and conventions have become colorful circuses televised worldwide. 

The circus performers never stop jabbing at each; boorishly insulting each other for fear of becoming irrelevant during their bid for the presidency. To make the Donkey and Elephant theatrics more interesting and emotionally stimulating a couple of present day candidates have thrown in heaping spoonsful of racism and finger pointing at minorities to elevate the blood pressure of their avid supporters. This kind of spoon-fed race baiting is ideal for White folks, who relish blaming “others” for their financial and personal problems. Prior to blaming Mexican immigrants for their troubles, such as snatching employment opportunities away from them---African Americans were the culprits. I never realized that White folks competed with Mexican laborers.

Although White folks in America have always had the help of affirmative action to strengthen
 and boost their bootstraps, they do not feel that Black folks should have access to affirmative action bootstraps. They would prefer that Blacks be happy campers with no rights of any kind. And then up pops the civil rights movement, coming full force with demands to be strands of thread in that huge quilt called politics. Demanding the right to vote pushed White folks over the edge, especially in the Deep South. For several years White politicians have schemed to keep Black Democrats out of the process, making it difficult for them to register and vote the same day. Republicans actually wish the Democratic Party would go away.

52 years later nothing has changed 

except the players

Here we are 52 years later, listening to the same old words from new and old mouths. Here we are in 2016 observing the 1964 presidential election being replayed, and breathtakingly written about by the media as if it were brand new. The only thing different is the cast of characters pandering for votes, applause, mindless adoration and public approval. The deaths of racism and bigotry have been greatly exaggerated. Neither of them died, for sure, with the election Barack Obama, an African American, as president of the United States.

In 1964 President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Jekyll and Hyde, had public and private personalities, was running for re-election. He would fit in comfortably with today’s GOP candidates, and what they are telling voters. White Southerners believe they are losing “their” America to Black folks. With the election of Barack Obama, White folks are told by White politicians that they, a majority people of the highest order, have been marginalized and forgotten about in favor of African Americans.

Just what scared White people you might be asking. The fear started  in 1964 when Black civil rights activists and leaders from Mississippi and other southern states wanted to register to vote. They also wanted to be seated as delegates at the Democrats National Convention. This did not make Johnson happy. His mouth espoused one thing, the legislation he signed into law said something else. He was the manifestation of Jekyll and Hyde contradicting each other, as seen in today’s GOP crop of presidential candidates.

“LBJ had shifted from worrying about the response of liberal Northerners to the seating of segregationists to worrying about the backlash among Whites everywhere if angry Blacks and their White supporters dominated the convention coverage. 

“I think the Negroes are going back to Reconstruction period, they're going to set themselves back a hundred years . . . and I'm just trying to get a vice president for them . . . and here these folks go get everybody upset. . . . Hell, the Northerners are more upset . . . they wire me to tell me the Negroes are taking over the country, they're running the White House, they're running the Democratic Party . . . it's not Mississippi and Alabama anymore . . . you're catching hell from Michigan, Ohio, Philadelphia, New York, that nearly every White man in this country would be frightened if he thought the Negroes were going to take him over. . . . We can't ever buy spots that'll equal this. . . . We've got five million budgeted but we can't undo what they've done these past few days”.

Lyndon Johnson, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz

 

Change the candidate from a duplicitous Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz; flip the “enemy” from African Americans to Mexicans, and we have the 1964 presidential election.  White people proclaimed in 2009, “We want our country back!”; “Blacks have taken over the White House!”; “Democrats stole the presidential election!” It seems they lost their collective minds when Barack Obama was elected president. Demands for “return of their America” intensified with his re-election. As a result of this anger, White pundits have predicted there will never be another Black person elected president in the U. S. 

When Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency last year the media and GOP did not take him seriously. He was supposed to be a flash in the pan. The pan stayed on the stove, and the flash became a huge headache. Republicans do not know to shit or go blind. The adage is apropos for what is happening to the GOP. Republicans can thank Trump and his evil twin Ted Cruz for the shit or go blind analogy.

In addition to trying to bully, threaten, and offend his way into the White House, Trump is challenging GOP bigwigs. He wants them to flush down the toilet, all prior rules for nominating a candidate. He wants it done before the upcoming National Convention in Ohio in July. Trump said earlier that he and his supporters will not stand by and let the GOP take the nomination away from him. Trump does care about the delegates count. He is demanding that they nominate him regardless, come hell or high water.

Like Trump, Lyndon Johnson was determined he was not going to let activists or rivals block his nomination at the Democratic convention, even if it meant favoring White delegates over the 64 Black and four White Mississippians.

Trump expects to arrive at the informal ball with the largest number of delegates, not the 1,237 required for the nomination. He is already making his case to voters in advance. Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, and John Kasich, governor of Ohio, are saying to Trump: “Hold on there, buster! This circus has more action clowns than you!” The duo is hoping for a contested convention to elevate their chances of getting the treasured nomination.

At least the 2016 delegates will be assigned seats and voting privileges at the GOP convention. That was not always the case for Black citizens living in Deep South states, where Whites would not relinquish their old ways of discrimination and control. Years after slavery Blacks were not allowed to vote or participate in Whites only primaries. Just organizing to get Blacks registered often ended in deaths for a mixture of young and older activists, Black and White.

Contentious Democratic convention and 

seating of segregated delegates

Fannie Hamer and Ella Baker, 1964

The GOP convention is slated to be contentious according to Trump and his supporters. One earlier contentious convention occurred in 1964. Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson was the incumbent president. He fell into the presidency after John Kennedy was assassinated November 1963 in Dallas, Texas. As VP Johnson automatically reversed roles, serving out Kennedy’s term. Just like politicians dislike Republican Ted Cruz, Washington politicians also disliked the brash, up-in-your-face Texan.

Denial of delegate seats to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) at the National Democratic Convention caused Fannie Lou Hamer, the daughter of a Mississippi sharecropper, armed only with a sixth grade education, to question America after Johnson’s scheme to stop them from testifying before the Credentials Committee. They were invited to testify about political discrimination, the obstacles that slapped them in the face whenever they attempted to register to vote, having to pick an amendment in the Constitution and explain it. MFDP’s objective was to convince the Committee to seat them as delegates representing Mississippi. The convention was being held in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

“While the student volunteers knocked on door and taught classes, Hamer was busy with the MFDP. The party held its own conventions at the precinct, county and state levels to select a group to send to Atlantic City in August, where they would challenge the seating of the all-White Mississippi delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Hamer was elected vice chair of the integrated delegation, which consisted of 64 Black members and four White members”. (PBS)

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was formed April 26, 1964 with the help of Hamer. It was part of the Mississippi Summer Project that attracted college students who traveled to Mississippi to work with local civil rights activists. The majority of the students were White and from the North.

Johnson does not want to alienate Dixiecrats

Learning about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s reason for testifying before the Credentials Committee, Johnson

Hubert Humphrey

promptly dispatched his VP pick, Hubert Humphrey, to convince the group that now was not the right time to seat Black delegates at the convention. Johnson knew he could alienate White Southern Democrats, all instrumental to his first full-term election. The MFDP had to get 10 percent of the Committee on their side.

Texas governor, John Connally, admonished Johnson that if he seated “those Black buggers the whole South will walk out” of the convention. Being a native Texan aware of Southern politicians and their racially charged dialect, I guarantee you the governor did not call the Black Mississippians buggers.

“Nonetheless, under pressure from Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, members of the Credentials Committee dropped their support for the MFDP. As a conciliatory gesture, Democratic officials offered two-at-large seats to MFDP representatives, though Humphrey made it clear Johnson would not stand for one of the seat going to Hamer. The President has said he will not let that illiterate woman speak on the floor of the Democratic convention”. (PBS)

Johnson said, according to American Legacy, “If we mess with this group of Negroes . . . we will lose 15 states without even campaigning”. Johnson pushed a compromise.

The so-called “compromise” made it clear that the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had to agree to accept the two guest seats on the convention floor. However, they could not vote; they had no voice or power. All they could do was sit and observe White delegates participate in the process. Another condition for sitting in the worthless seats was that they had to sign an oath of loyalty to the Democratic ticket. The MFDP roundly rejected the compromise.

Not all civil rights leaders concurred with the MDFP. “One after another, the big names of the civil rights movement appeared before the Mississippians, telling them they didn’t know a victory when they saw one and urging them not to damage the electoral chances of Johnson and other Democratic leaders”. (American Legacy, 2001)

Humphrey threw in his two cents worth of advice. Humphrey appealed to the MFDP leaders to accept the proposal. He supported their cause, he told them. Johnson made it clear to Humphrey that he did not want a floor fight at the convention. Fannie Lou Hamer shook her head in disappointment.

Hamer said to Humphrey, “Senator Humphrey, I been praying about you, and I been thinking about you, and you’re a good man, and you know what’s right. The trouble is, you’re afraid to do what you know is right. You just want the job. . . . Mr. Humphrey, if you take this job, you won’t be worth anything”.

“I’m not going to stoop to no two votes at large,” Hamer said of the new offer. The majority of the delegation agreed. “Once again, Whites were telling Blacks what to do. In this case it was White liberals, who had supported an end to discrimination and segregation, but on their own terms and timetable."

The MFDP was so furious that it marched that night into the convention hall singing the now famous civil rights song, We Shall Overcome. “With credentials given them by sympathetic delegates, Hamer, Victoria Gray, and 20 other Mississippi insurgents slipped in an sat in seats vacated by the regular Mississippi delegation, most of whom declined to take the loyalty oath mandated by the compromise and had left for home”’.

The determined activists refused to relinquish the seats when the sergeants-at-arms asked them to leave.  “Surrounded by swarms of television correspondents and cameraman, they denounced the hypocrisy of a President and party that professed their commitment to civil rights, but refused to acknowledge an integrated group of delegates fully supported of Democratic Party principles and policies”. (American Legacy, 2001)

The MFDP returned to Mississippi to continue their purpose of registering Black Mississippians to vote. Hamer’s testimony lifted her profile, and she was soon in demand as a speaker.

His Texas eyes on the MFDP, Johnson goes 

into full hypocrisy mode

President Lyndon Johnson

Johnson was fearful that his ultra conservative rival Barry Goldwater would reach for the racial bag of tricks, pulling out a doozy that would work against his re-election bid. There had been a number of riots due to police brutality. On July 16, 1964 a Black man was shot and killed by a White cop, sparking six nights of rioting in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Jersey City. This shooting was an accumulation of many police shootings and physical abuse heaped on African Americans by White police nationwide.

What the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party did not know is that behind the scenes Johnson had gone into full ruin and vanquish mode. With all the power of the U.S. government on his side, Johnson was cognizant that the Black activists from Mississippi were climbing up a greased hill. American Legacy reported, “He was determined that nothing would mar his party’s coronation of him as its 1964 standard bearer---or his chances for victory in November. Despite his approval rating of nearly 70 percent in the polls, he was convinced that a floor fight over seating the MFDP would cost him the South and the election”.

Johnson was concerned that the Freedom Democratic Party would wield enough influence at the convention to persuade Southern states to break their allegiance to him. He was scared that Mississippi Democrats would vote for Republican Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative from Arizona.

Lyndon Johnson did not understand why Black folks were not satisfied with all he had done for them. They were just downright ungrateful! He had secured passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He did not understand why Blacks did not kiss his Texas boots. Johnson did understand the fine art underhandedness, which did not work in his favor.

President Johnson had the FBI tap MFDP headquarter phones. He wanted to get an upper hand on the organization, Dr. Martin Luther King, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) before they knew he had the goods on them. Agents impersonating reporters fished for, and compiled information on civil rights leaders and activists. Their catch was delivered to Johnson. Members of the Credentials Committee were threatened with the loss of their government jobs if they did not deny the MFDP seats on the convention floor.

Johnson was pissed about this hole in his bucket. He had to thwart the MFDP’s testimonies. While Hamer was testifying he called a hasty press conference at the White House to distract the media’s attention, taking it away from Hamer. Johnson’s plan worked but it later boomeranged. Hamer made history with her testimony. So touching and condemning was her August 22 testimony that all of the evening news programs played her testimony in full, unedited. Hamer destroyed the picture of perfect harmony among Democrats. Disarray is not what President Johnson wanted portrayed on TV. 

The media said of Hamer: “Her testimony was compelling enough for many evening news

Fannie Hamer testifies

programs broadcast it, incidentally granting it a much larger audience. Hamer held the Committee’s attention as she spoke from memory about her eviction from the Marlow plantation and her brutal beating in the Winona jail.  

After no less than 10 minutes she concluded: “The Freedom Democratic Party is not seated, now I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America”. (PBS)

Lyndon Johnson won re-relection in a landslide.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Born October 6, 1917, Fannie Lou Townsend was one of 20 children born to sharecroppers James Lee and Ella Townsend in rural Montgomery County, Mississippi, October 6, 1917. Townsend was not an educated woman. She dropped out of school at an early age to pick cotton and to help her financially strapped family survive. The Townsends lived and worked on a plantation owned by W. D. Marlow, near Ruleville in Sunflower County.  Because she could read and write the plantation owner appointed her timekeeper.

Fannie married Perry “Pap” Hamer in 1944. He was a tractor driver on the same plantation. The couple did not have children of their own. At some point Hamer entered the North Sunflower County Hospital to have an appendectomy operation. She emerged from the hospital a sterile woman.

In the 1960s poor women living in the South went to hospitals for minor surgery and ended up getting hysterectomies without their consent or knowledge. Some women’s tube were tied. Eugenics was a government secret and poor women and men were targeted because they were considered undesirables, and the government did not want them to procreate. 

Hamer and Perry adopted two girls whose family could not provide for them.

Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer made her bones in politics in 1962 when she hooked up with civil rights activists in Mississippi. The group that she worked with called themselves the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). When the plantation owner learned that Hamer had registered to vote, he ordered her to leave the plantation.

He ordered Hamer to withdraw her voter registration. She refused, telling him:  “I didn’t go down there to register for you. I went down there to register for myself”. Down there was a bus ride to the county seat of Indianola with 17 neighbors and activists.

Fannie Hamer speaks to c outside the Capital in Washington, Sept. 17, 1965

June 9, 1963 Hamer and fellow colleagues were returning home from a citizenship training session in Charleston, South Carolina. Their bus was stopped in Winona, Mississippi. “In an act of protest, several members of the group sat at the bus station’s White’s only lunch counter. Before long the police removed them from the café, arresting six people. In jail, several of the activists were beaten by the police and by other African Americans inmates, whom the police forced to use blackjacks as weapons. The damage done to Hamer’s eyes, legs and kidneys would affect her for the rest of her life”. (PBS) 

Hamer talked about the jail house beatings when she testified in front of the Credentials Committee. She recalled the brutal beating at the hands of two Black prisoners: “ . . . I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.

“The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face.  I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old”. These Black jail house abusers did not break Hamer's spirit.

Hamer ran for State Senator in 1971, District 11, Bolivar and Sunflower Counties. She lost the race but not her zest to fight for what was right, stepping in where she saw civil rights being violated and denied to Black Mississippians. 

Hamer, who was threatened with death many times was diagnosed to have breast cancer in 1976. She continued her purpose until she was hospitalized. She died March 17, 1977 at age 59.  U.S. delegate to the United Nations, Andrew Young, Jr., delivered Hamer’s eulogy at her funeral. Ella Baker (above photo) of the Southern Christian  Leadership Conference and several noted civil rights leaders spoke at Hamer's funeral in celebration of the life she lived.

Gov. Christie played fast and loose with the facts about White voters in the South and civil rights

Ferguson, Missouri, 2014. Protesters protest the shooting death of Michael Brown, 18, who was killed by Darren Wilson, a White cop. Protesters are threatened with police dogs, just like the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The more things change for African Americans, the more they stay the same.

Angry White citizens in Little Rock, Arkansas hold protest against integration and "race mixing." One protestor's sign stated that "Race Mixing is Communism."

Nonviolent students sitting at a lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi, May 28, 1963. They were attacked by belligerent  White males who were bucking for a fight that they did not get. African American and White  protesters were taught not to react to violence against them. Rev. Martin Luther King insisted that protesters not be violent or incite violence.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrat from Texas, signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Noted leader of the civil rights movement, Rev. Martin King, Jr., was present at the signing.

The infamous Bull Connor getting ready to sic violent dogs on nonviolent civil rights marchers, which was a common on the journey to freedom and justice for African Americans in America in the 1950s and 1960s.

Civil rights activists were routinely tear gassed and beaten by law enforcement. Until the TV cameras captured the raw brutality and inhuman atrocities these protesters experienced, many of these horrific crimes against them were never seen by Americans. 

Chris Christie Said What?!---

New Jersey’s governor Chris Christie was taught a different course on history that did not include the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He was born in 1962. As an adult and the governor of the last state to free salves in 1866, Christie has no excuse for being absolutely illiterate about the civil rights movement. Had he taken the time he would have learned that New Jersey politicians were reluctant to abolish slavery; they were reluctant to pass the 13th Amendment. Christie's lack of historical knowledge jumped out like Frankenstein after a facelift. Here is an asinine statement he made January 18.

"People would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South."

Christie was speaking to a State Senate Judiciary Committee. The remark was made in reference to the approval of a bill pushing New Jersey closer to legalizing same sex marriage. Christie's comparison of same sex marriage to the civil rights movement is way off base and completely disconnected.

I guess it would be fair to cut Christie some slack, but I am not in the mood to be fair. As  governor of a former slave state, his lack of history is inexcusable. I am quite aware that Black history was not taught in segregated schools. White students were not required to learn about the contributions Black people made to America.

Needless to say, the governor's assertion raised eyebrows among African Americans, especially those who knew about, and participated in the civil rights movement. He upset a couple of Black gays in politics.

"In Asbury Park, Mayor Ed Johnson, who is Black and gay, said: 'Can you imagine President Truman placing integration of the Armed Forces on the ballot? Or us voting on whether women should have equal pay for equal work?"

"And in Bergen County, Assemblyman Gordon Johnson, who is also Black, said in a statement: 'The governor apparently doesn't even understand that minorities likely would have been blocked from voting on a civil rights referendum in the South. Because they didn't have civil rights!"' (Channel 4 New York News)

Christie should have known if civil rights for African Americans was left up to White people and individual states, they would not be allowed to vote today. Left to a referendum, African Americans would be the designated "immigrants", earning minimum wages or less, working at low skill jobs, and still living under Jim Crow laws in a segregated America.

Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation---Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, technically emancipated enslaved Africans via an executive order during the Civil War, January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation only abolished slavery in 10 Confederate states.  In addition to freeing slaves, the 13th Amendment squashed all forms of involuntary servitude.

"When the American Civil War (1861-65) began, President Abraham Lincoln carefully framed the conflict as concerning the preservation of the Union rather than the abolition of slavery. Although he personally found the practice of slavery abhorrent, he knew that neither Northerners nor the residents of the border slave states would support abolition as a war aim. But by mid-1862, as thousands of slaves fled to join the invading Northern armies, Lincoln was convinced that abolition had become a sound military strategy, as well as the morally correct path.

"On September 22, soon after the Union victory at Antietam, he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. While the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave, it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom. 

"Lincoln and the Republican party recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation, as a war measure, might have no constitutional validity once the war was over. The legal framework of slavery would still exist in the former Confederate states as well as in the Union slave states that had been exempted from the proclamation. So the party committed itself to a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. 

The overwhelmingly Republican Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment by more than the necessary two-thirds majority on April 8, 1864. But not until January 31, 1865, did enough Democrats in the House abstain or vote for the amendment to pass it by a bare two-thirds. By December 18, 1865, the requisite three-quarters of the states had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which ensured that forever after “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude ... shall exist within the United States". (History.com)

13th Amendment, Section 1: ‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.’

Despite all noble intentions the 13th Amendment, it was not a good friend to ex-slaves. They were left homeless, penniless and abandoned. They had nowhere to go. They had no prospect for a better life. They had no rights the dominant population had to recognize.

From what I read in some  historical accounts, thousands of freed slaves stayed on with their "former" owners. Being homeless, having no money, no prospects for paid employment, the ex-slaves were subjected to vagrancy laws that landed them in jail, and back to working free. 

Nonetheless, without an income they were expected to pay the fines imposed on them if they could not prove they were employed. They were caught between a rock and hard place, and the hard place was winning. They could not escape the burdens of their previous condition. The Emancipation Proclamation did not deal the freed slave a fair hand in a society that hated the color of their skin.

When the 14th Amendment was proposed in 1866 it went a step farther. Ratified in 1868, it bestowed on ex-slaves all the Constitutional rights that White people were privileged to. Andrew Johnson was president, and this is how the Amendment came into fruition:

   

“The Radicals' first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. Next they passed measures dealing with the former slaves. Johnson vetoed the legislation. The Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto--the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and forbade discrimination against them.” (Our U.S. Presidents)

These Amendments did not stop states from enacting newly created Jim Crow and Black Code laws, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, intimidation, White only primaries, and literacy tests that asked stupid questions as prerequisites to vote. Not even the smartest White citizen or politician could answer the questions. This drop kick scheme was solely devised to “regulate” former slaves, stopping them from demanding their rights.

The 15th Amendment grants voting rights to U. S. citizens regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Noticeably, the right to vote is not in the Constitution. This right is a man created privilege that only White men were allowed to exercise.  The amendment was proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870 under President Ulysses S. Grant. The completed package was supposed to favor former slaves but they did not have the power to take advantage of their rights. They were free on paper but Whites still had control over them.

Freedom without true freedom---Because ex-slaves were powerless and helpless against Whites  who were determined to keep “them in their place”, they would have to fight for real freedom, not the empty freedom granted them by Abraham Lincoln. Over the years Blacks were intimidated and killed by terrorist gangs such as the KKK and similar vigilantes. Lynchings of men and women,  mutilations, Black men burned alive, rape of Black girls and women were as common as hanging trees and grass. Body parts were sold for souvenirs after or before a lynching or human burning. No Whites were ever prosecuted for these inhuman crimes against Black Americans. No law, judge or jury was on their side.

Fast forward to peaceful sit-ins, marches, demonstrations and protests spearheaded by civil rights leaders and followers in 1950s. Rosa Parks, though not the only figure in the quest for civil rights and freedom, is the most recognized for her refusal to relinquish her seat to a White man on a Montgomery city bus.

The bus driver demanded that she go to the back of the bus. She was sitting closer to the front than the back, somewhere in the middle, which was a no-no in those days. The irony is, if there were no available seats in the front of the bus, the bus driver could demand that a “Negro” give up his or her seat in the back of the bus for a White passenger. Parks steadfastness caused her to get arrested, thus sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1964.

From 1955 to 1968---Civil rights leaders and activists refused to retreat. They continued the marches, mainly in the deep South, where White folk treated civil rights like personal Christmas gifts that Blacks were trying to steal. Among the noted civil rights leaders was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He became the face and voice of a nonviolent movement. Despite the nonviolence hundreds of leaders and activists were killed, threatened, bitten by police dogs, water hosed, spat on, stoned, cursed at, and beaten by White law enforcement. White people said their "rights" were getting taken away from them to favor Black people.

Now doesn't that sound familiar?

“Many African-Americans risked their lives to march and protest for their voting rights. On March 7, 1965, 525 marchers intended to walk from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state capital. They didn't get far before police confronted them on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. When the protesters refused to turn back, police fired tear gas and attacked the crowd with clubs and whips.” (E-How)

In the end African Americans won a hard-fought change. Whereas they were still discriminated against and basically disenfranchised as legal citizens, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texas Democrat, lessened some their apprehension when he signed into law the  Civil Rights Act of 1964 at the White House, July 2. Suffice it say Southern Democrats fought the hardest against passage of the Civil Right Act. They liked things just the way they were. Blacks were not equal to Whites and they never would be in the eyes of these Democrats and their constituents.

“The bill came before the full Senate for debate on March 30, 1964. The Southern Bloc of 18 southern Democratic Senators and one Republican Senator led by Richard Russell (D-GA) launched a filibuster to prevent its passage. Said Russell: 'We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states.'"  (Wikipedia)

This is a mere synopsis African of Americans dying and suffering for their right to vote and live the American Dream, not a mythical promise of the dream. The horrors they suffered were exposed in graphic photos and videos on the evening news. This is what Christie did not take time to research. I guess he is not cognizant of the fact that Republican governors (like himself) and politicians in more than 30 states are reverting to old southern-style tricks and strategies to deprive African Americans of their right to vote. This time it's his party not the Democrats, not all of whom I trust not revert to the "good old days."

This scheme was a preplanned goal to implement if Republicans won big during the midterm elections of 2010.  Well, they won big with the help of raging tea partiers and big money donors. And here we are with a blowhard like Christie foolishly espousing in 2012: "People would have been happy to have referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South."

Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker said, "Frankly, I wouldn't be where I am today if states had voted on civil rights."