Eugene Robinson questions the old Southern election race code in his article today in the Washington Post. Due in part to independent voters, Harold Ford is closing in on the race in Tennessee that might make him the first African American elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction....
And Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes in the Huffington Post about the prospects of a Barak Obama presidential run in 2008.....
Meanwhile, Fred Newman comments this week in Talk Talk: "Yes, it’s changing, all politics are changing and black politics and white politics are inseparable. Always have been, always will be. This is an American issue. There aren’t black issues and white issues in America. There are black and white issues in America. You mentioned Novak’s remarks about Hillary Clinton. This is a theme now in politics – Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And it is a part of American history, it’s the continuation of what has been a long-term 200 year old fight between blacks and women on who’s going to go first, electorally.... "
2 comments:
Really now--Have blacks and women been fighting each other for 200 years to see who goes first electorally? And does "blacks" include black women. I don't understand. Has this struggle pitched black men against black women--maybe??--or what? Or is it a contest between black men--Obama--vs white women--Hillary? Sounds a bit garbled.
Here's a helpful timeline from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawstime.html
1866
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage.
1868
The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified, which extends to all citizens the protections of the Constitution against unjust state laws. This Amendment was the first to define "citizens" and "voters" as "male."
1869
The women's rights movement splits into two factions as a result of disagreements over the Fourteenth and soon-to-be-passed Fifteenth Amendments. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the more radical, New York-based National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe organize the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which is centered in Boston. In this same year, the Wyoming territory is organized with a woman suffrage provision. In 1890, Wyoming was admitted to the Union with its suffrage provision intact.
1870
The Fifteenth Amendment enfranchises black men. NWSA refuses to work for its ratification, arguing, instead, that it be "scrapped" in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment providing universal suffrage. Frederick Douglass breaks with Stanton and Anthony over NWSA's position.
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