Got my new voter registration card! Are you registered to vote? If you're in Texas, you can check by going to https://team1.sos.state.tx.us/voterws/viw/faces/SearchSelectionVoter.jsp
ARE YOU REGISTERED?
Pick up Voter Registration Applications at:
A HISTORY LESSON FOR MY KIDS
So much happened during my early lifetime. We sent a man to the moon, we unwrapped the mystery of the human genome, women got the right to choose, we survived an Oil Embargo, and most importantly, Blacks got the right to vote.
Not too very long ago, people, both black and white, fought and died for the right for Blacks to vote. Technically they had the right to vote with passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. However, during the "Age of Redemption" (after Federal troops left the South), - blacks (and some poor whites) had to pay a "poll tax" or correctly guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap in order to vote.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally rolled back Jim Crow laws (more to come later on this) gave blacks the right to vote. THIS WAS IN MY LIFETIME!!! I remember seeing the clashes in Alabama on TV (black-and-white, three channels only).
I got to looking into the Amendments before spouting off and discovered that women only got the right to vote in 1920 (19th Amendment)!!! That was in my grandmother's lifetime!! They weren't beaten (not as much, anyway), or had dogs turned loose on them, but women were jailed, force-fed and, yes, some did die, in order to get this RIGHT.
So you see kids, voting is a RIGHT, but it's also a duty. Just as we pay allegiance to the Flag, you need to take the time out of your busy schedules to vote - for the thousands of people before you, who risked everything, so that you could vote, fairly and freely.
Maybe my next blog will be on the Amendments to the Constitution? I think we need a refresher course. I sure learned a lot in the short time I looked stuff up. Do they even teach that in High School anymore?
ARE YOU REGISTERED?
Pick up Voter Registration Applications at:
- your local U.S. Post Office
- Voter Registrar's Office
- f you're lazy, like me, go to http://www.RegisterToVote.org. This is for all 50 states. You fill out the application online, print it and mail it.
A HISTORY LESSON FOR MY KIDS
So much happened during my early lifetime. We sent a man to the moon, we unwrapped the mystery of the human genome, women got the right to choose, we survived an Oil Embargo, and most importantly, Blacks got the right to vote.
Not too very long ago, people, both black and white, fought and died for the right for Blacks to vote. Technically they had the right to vote with passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. However, during the "Age of Redemption" (after Federal troops left the South), - blacks (and some poor whites) had to pay a "poll tax" or correctly guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap in order to vote.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally rolled back Jim Crow laws (more to come later on this) gave blacks the right to vote. THIS WAS IN MY LIFETIME!!! I remember seeing the clashes in Alabama on TV (black-and-white, three channels only).
I got to looking into the Amendments before spouting off and discovered that women only got the right to vote in 1920 (19th Amendment)!!! That was in my grandmother's lifetime!! They weren't beaten (not as much, anyway), or had dogs turned loose on them, but women were jailed, force-fed and, yes, some did die, in order to get this RIGHT.
So you see kids, voting is a RIGHT, but it's also a duty. Just as we pay allegiance to the Flag, you need to take the time out of your busy schedules to vote - for the thousands of people before you, who risked everything, so that you could vote, fairly and freely.
Maybe my next blog will be on the Amendments to the Constitution? I think we need a refresher course. I sure learned a lot in the short time I looked stuff up. Do they even teach that in High School anymore?
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