VOTING RIGHTS ISSUE 2005                                
INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Thousands Walk To Save Voting Rights
Clinton Supports Reauthorizing Act

Thousands Walk To Save Voting Rights

BY DAVID STOKES

Collage Photos: Keep the Vote Alive! - Nearly 20,000 local and national advocates of the Voting Rights Act descended onto downtown Atlanta demanding federal government officials reauthorize the Act's provisions set to expire in 2007. Shown above, along with marchers trekking from Spring Street's Richard Russell Federal Building to Morris Brown College's Herndon Stadium at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Vine Street, are (left to right) Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition; U.S. Representative Maxine Waters of California, U.S. Representative John Lewis, an original 1965 marcher with Reverend Hosea Williams for Blacks' voting rights that led to the infamous Selma to Montgomery march; Andrew Young, the former U.N. Ambassador and Atlanta mayor who also served as SCLC's executive director to Martin Luther King, Jr.; legendary singer Harry Belafonte, an activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery march with Sammy Davis, Jr., Charleton Heston, Diahann Carroll and other entertainers, and the inimitable Stevie Wonder./PHOTOS BY JOHN B. SMITH, JR.

The sweltering heat and humidity of a recent Saturday afternoon could not have been planned more perfectly as the backdrop to determination and response of late when many local and national activists, celebrities and mothers and fathers in tow with their children came together in downtown Atlanta as individual protest to call for the reauthorization of key provisions of the historic federal Voting Rights Act.

From the Richard B. Russell Federal Building on Spring St. to the Herndon Stadium on Morris Brown College’s campus, the two-mile trek of young and old and rich and poor was intended to serve notice for President Bush and U.S. Congress to “renew and strengthen” provisions of the Act guaranteeing African- Americans, in particular, the right to vote without being subjected to discriminatory practices with registering to participate within the electoral process . . .

Clinton Supports Reauthorizing Act

BY DAVID STOKES

The man raised in a town called Hope, Ark., who grew to become leader of the world’s most powerful nation and in “the cradle of the civil rights movement” last week to keynote the opening session of the 30th annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), voiced public support toward rights leaders pushing President Bush and Congress to renew the federal legislation outlawing discriminatory practices and procedures that guarantees African-Americans the right to vote during an address to thousands of reporters and editors, photographers and producers gathered to celebrate three decades of “Telling Our Story with Passion, Power, Pride and Purpose”.

In the main ballroom of downtown Atlanta’s Hyatt Regency Hotel, former President Bill Clinton made clear his disdain and concern of possible Republican-motivated forces in Washington, D.C.— precipitated by President Bush’s claim months ago his lack of knowledge of the Act’s expiration—readying to not reauthorize the historic Voting Rights Act when specific provisions within the full law are due to expire in 2007.

“I think the right to vote (for black Americans) is in danger,” the 42nd U.S. president said. “It is wrong, and it’s unAmerican.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Act as law on Aug. 6, 1965 after proponents of voting rights for blacks coordinated five months prior the infamous Selma-to- Montgomery (Ala.) March, the response and call for justice against senseless deaths of local and national advocates seeking inclusion of minorities into the electoral process.

Clinton, now 59, was a teen in 1965, preparing to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar . . .