Radnofsky speech on Voting Rights-July 11th

Barbara Radnofsky & Stewart (Photo)

By Barbara Radnofsky
candidate for Texas Senator

On March 4, 1865, with victory close at hand, Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. In the audience, and captured in a photograph standing behind him to his upper left, was John Wilkes Booth, who cut Lincoln down in assassination not long thereafter.

Lincoln's speech was remarkable for its modesty, courage, hope, and respect.
Here's what the great Commander in Chief said of the imminent war victory that would save the Union: “With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.”

Our country had learned to expect such great statements, rather than empty boasts of “mission accomplished.”

No one now disputes Lincoln's greatness in leading the country in extraordinary times and in healing America with a great effort. The second inaugural is considered one of America's greatest works.

But America’s greatest letter was written in April 1963 by an imprisoned preacher who is forever remembered for his service, sacrifice, and efforts. The “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was begun on the margins of a newspaper supplied by jail trustees.

The Rev. Martin Luther King responded to a letter from eight white Alabama clergymen calling on King to end his policy of non-violent resistance. They didn’t like him coming to Birmingham.

King explained: “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

He was assassinated in 1968, but he lived to see the passage of landmark legislation during the administration of, and a legacy of, President Lyndon B. Johnson, a piece of legislation now threatened by our Congress.

The Voting Rights Act was passed one hundred years after Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

The evidence collected by independent scholars is clear: while vote discrimination against minorities has decreased since 1965 thanks to the Voting Rights Act, up-to-date evidence shows that discrimination clearly continues in the Twenty-first Century. Moreover, vote discrimination of many kinds occurs at a disproportionately high level in the sixteen states covered entirely or partially by Section 5 of that historic law.

If we lose Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which puts the burden on our Department of Justice to prevent vote discrimination, the only solution under the Voting Right Act will be individual lawsuits, which cost thousands of dollars and often slog their way through the courts for years.

Let’s allow the Department of Justice to do its job for the common good of American democracy, and let us call on Congress to renew the Voting Rights Act, and particularly Section 5.

This country aches for leaders with courage. Why doesn’t Congress step forward? Why won’t my opponent step forward? Why won’t they protect our rights?
Reverend King taught us that “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Challenge and controversy confront us. We seek leaders, we ache for leaders, we will find leaders among us, who will serve us as did President Lincoln and modern heroes like Reverend King and President Johnson, heroes whose legacies live on in the Voting Rights Act.

The leaders this country needs will live up to the promise of Lincoln’s second inaugural: “With malice toward none, with charity toward all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see that right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

This why Texans will elect Democrats in November 2006.