When I saw Desiline Victor sitting in the first lady's box . . .

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from Joseph Palermo at HuffPo:




Desiline Victor and Black History

In his State of the Union address when President Barack Obama paid tribute to Desiline Victor, the 102-year-old African-American woman from North Miami who was forced to wait for hours to cast her ballot last November, he was highlighting not only the Florida Republican Party's voter suppression efforts but the tortured history of race relations in America. February is "Black History Month" and the nation's first black president offered yet another a "teachable moment."

. . . When I saw Desiline Victor sitting in the first lady's box I thought of Jo Ann Robinson, Rosa Parks, and other African-American women in Montgomery, Ala. who organized the Women's Political Council and later formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). I thought about the bus boycott and the week-long Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change sponsored by the MIA in December 1956 where Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham learned about the efficacy of nonviolent civil disobedience. I thought about the southern black women who were the heart and soul of Shuttleworth's Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), which brought the principles of the Montgomery bus boycott to the local struggle in Birmingham.

. . . When I saw Desiline Victor I thought of Ella Baker of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) who early on recognized the potential of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), as a force that could propel the movement forward. I thought of Diane Nash and all of the other brave young people who came forward to show their elders the level of their commitment and the huge cohort of courageous young people willing to go to jail and endure great hardships to bring down Jim Crow.

. . . Desiline Victor's travails in trying to vote last November bring to mind Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964 when white vigilantes tortured and killed Micky Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney who had volunteered to register black voters. I also thought about the march from Selma to Montgomery and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. It's fitting that Desiline Victor is from Florida. Back in 2000, when voting "irregularities" in that state gave the presidency to George W. Bush there was a mountain of evidence indicating that Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State (and Bush campaign chair) Katherine Harris had suppressed the black vote through phony "felon" lists and other tricks reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. The United States Supreme Court, even with an African-American Associate Justice filling the same seat once held by Thurgood Marshall, failed to look into the prospects of racially discriminatory and politically motivated restrictions on voting. President Obama highlighting Desiline Victor's story about the difficulties she faced trying to vote could go a long way to educate the public about the seriousness of voter suppression and show those clever Republican governors and state officials that they're not going to get away with it.


read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/desiline-victor-sotu-michelle-obama_b_2674735.html

President Obama:

"When she arrived at her polling place, she was told the wait to vote might be six hours. And as time ticked by, her concern was not with her tired body or aching feet, but whether folks like her would get to have their say. Hour after hour, a throng of people stayed in line in support of her. Because Desiline is 102 years old. And they erupted in cheers when she finally put on a sticker that read 'I Voted.'"

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