A few days ago, March 25th, marked two things of note: 1) Fred’s 50-something birthday, and 2) the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama to protest the lack of voting rights in the south at the time. In a recently published article in Fred’s hometown newspaper, The Town Crier, Fred wrote about our visits to a number of the important civil rights sights in the south, including driving the 54-mile route that Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists took on their March 21-25 protest march from Selma to the steps of the Alabama State House in Montgomery in 1965.
He also wrote about how the battle for voting rights continues today as over 30 states have passed voter suppression laws in recent years that it is estimated could disenfranchise over five million citizens from voting. A great majority of these disenfranchised are African Americans, Hispanics, the elderly, college students and people with disabilities. Proponents of these laws, laws that often focus on stricter voter ID requirements, would suggest that the laws are necessary to address rampant voter fraud. But as you will read, and as Mark Twain commented on reports of his death, actual incidents of voter fraud are, to say the least, “greatly exaggerated.”
Here is the link to Fred’s article: Selma to Montgomery
