You don’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. If you don’t know your history then the forecast for your future is cloudy at best.
As African Americans, history teaches us that the right to vote was identified generations ago as our key to freedom in America. That’s because our ancestors knew that the only way to affect the changes we so desperately needed was to be fully counted. That meant having our voices heard in the corridors of power when important decisions affecting Black lives were being made, oftentimes by those who cared very little about Black lives.
In the historic “I Have A Dream” keynote speech that he delivered in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963 for the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom, Dr. Martin Luther King said:
“We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.”
Few are aware that Dr. King delivered the first draft of that speech several months earlier on June 24, 1963 in Detroit at what was then Cobo Hall. This time, his remarks were part of Detroit’s Walk to Freedom, a historically momentous occasion that was conceived by my Uncle, Rev. Albert Cleage Jr., founder of the Shrine of the Black Madonna, and the late Rev. C.L. Franklin, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church and father of Aretha Franklin, Detroit’s own undisputed Queen of Soul.
As a very young man at that time who had grown accustomed to such family guests as Malcolm X, Dr. King, Coleman Young, and many others, I may not have understood everything that was going on, but I was old enough to be sensitive to the tension of the times. I knew that important things were happening, and members of my family were in the thick of it all. As I grew older, I came to understand the significance of those discussions about civil rights that frequently took place at church and family gatherings, and I also grew to appreciate the sacrifices made and risks taken by my family so that the young people of my generation could have a better life.
I learned that it isn’t enough to say ‘thank-you’ to those who came before us and then go on enjoying our lives. I learned that the struggle for equality and opportunity is an obligation and necessary burden that is passed from one generation to the next. The civil rights struggle era never truly ended. It is up to us to do our part so that we don’t lose our hold on the ground that our ancestors fought so hard to gain.
Voting is the most fundamental element of that struggle. It is at once an imperative that we exercise our right to vote, and yet it is also the least we can do as citizens. Similarly, this year’s 2020 Census is of similar importance; everyone counts and everyone needs to be counted. But especially those who live in communities that are most often undercounted, which includes black and brown communities, immigrants, the homeless, senior citizens and children five years of age and younger.
Every year is different from the one that preceded it. However, the consequences of what we do – or don’t do – this year will either raise us up closer to where we need to be or set us back further than any of us would care to imagine.
This is our country. We have the most to gain, but also the most to lose if we don’t actively participate in our democracy. Come Census time and election time, we need to act like we know what that means.
Warren C. Evans is the Wayne County Executive. To hear him talk more about the Walk to Freedom and its significance, click here to view his videotaped discussion of this topic with Daniel Baxter, Wayne County Director of External Affairs.
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