DON’T INSULT PRESIDENT OBAMA!
By Divine Design News Service
President Barack Obama says that he will be personally insulted if people who voted for him in the last two presidential elections do not vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the November election. Large numbers of Obama coalition voters must put the first female president in the White House, he said recently.
“My name will not be on the ballot, but progress is on the ballot,” he said to a national television audience while delivering a speech at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner in Washington. “I will consider it an insult to my legacy if people let down their guard and fail to activate themselves in this election.
Imploring voters to support Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama, in a speech given to a college audience in Pennsylvania, said that the November election was about her husband’s legacy and dignity, and that voting for “Hillary Clinton was the only thing to do.” The nation’s first couple has thrown its formidable influence behind Secretary Clinton’s bid to lead the most powerful nation on the face of the planet.
African American voters turned out in unprecedented numbers to support President Obama in his two successful bids to win the White House. While comprising approximately 12.4 percent of the nation’s population, the African American vote is considered crucial to winning the White House. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has attempted to make inroads in the African American vote, but overwhelming numbers of African American voters are supporting Secretary Clinton. The question is whether or not sufficient numbers will go to the polls to ensure her election.
People of color and former slaves were granted the right to vote when the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1870. While the measure was law, poll taxes, racial prejudice and rampant violence against African Americans kept large numbers of people of color from exercising the franchise.
Prior to the presidency of Harry S. Truman, who became the nation’s leader in 1945 after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, large numbers of African Americans were members of the Republican Party. Democrats began to attract large numbers of African Americans when Truman proposed additional civil rights measures, including a federal ban on lynching, a practice which had been rampant in the nation’s history.
The Democrat Party’s appeal to African American voters was enhanced significantly in the 1960s with the ascendancy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement.
The national political landscape changed dramatically when President Lyndon Johnson pushed civil rights legislation through the Congress, including the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Those measures led to significant social and economic progress, and to the election of pivotal African American elected officials such as North Texas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and President Obama, the country’s first African American President.
——
(Next week, how to overcome unconstitutional voting restrictions passed by the Texas Legislature, and make your vote count!).
