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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
If we wish to be true to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.=s legacy, we must not forget that the defining and unwavering focal point of his life was his unrelenting struggle for justice.
For Dr. King, argues Michael Eric Dyson in his recently published book, I May Not Get There With You, the imperatives of greater racial justice could never be overshadowed by references to an abstract, Acolor-blind@ equality. We cannot A...whitewash our bloodstained racial history.@
I agree. In May of 1957, while proposed civil rights legislation was stalled in the Congress, Dr. King and other civil rights leaders led thousands of black and white Americans on a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington. King spoke about the importance of political power for those of us denied justice by a racist society.
A
All types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent the Negroes from becoming registered voters,@ he declared. AThe denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition.@A
Give us the ballot, and we will...fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a southern manifesto because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice.@Our right to vote, however, was to be won by struggle - not
Agiven@ to us. That is why, each year on Martin Luther King Day, we honor those who sacrificed to forge a more just and free America.Evelyn T. Butts and Joe Jordan were among those heroic women and men.
A black veteran who lost the use of his legs during the fighting in World War II, Joseph A. Jordan, Jr., overcame his physical limitations and Jim Crow to become a lawyer in Norfolk, Virginia. Evelyn Butts, an unemployed Norfolk seamstress and the wife of another disabled black veteran, was determined to exercise her right to vote.
Mrs. Butts was unable to pay the poll tax then required of all Virginia voters. She asked Joe Jordan to represent her. Since Mr. Jordan shared Dr. King=s understanding that African Americans need political power in order to receive justice in America, he agreed to take her case.
In the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case known as Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, they challenged the constitutionality of the poll tax used to exclude African Americans from voting in state and local elections across the South.
Joe Jordan and then U.S. Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall won that case for Evelyn Butts, and this country took another step toward becoming a truly just society.
In 1968, as a result of the expanded black voting power that his Supreme Court victory had achieved, it became possible for Joe Jordan to be elected his city=s first black councilman since Reconstruction. He subsequently became a judge, and from 1977 until his retirement, people who came before Judge Joseph A. Jordan, Jr., found that they could obtain justice from a black man who understood what justice means.
Judge Jordan often stood up for the rights of those who had nowhere else to turn; so it is only right that his contribution to our lives will be remembered during this year=s Martin Luther King Day celebration at Old Dominion University.
I will join community leaders from throughout the Norfolk region to support the important work of the local Urban League affiliate. We also will dedicate the memorial to Dr. King that Joe Jordan pursued throughout the last 20 years of his life.
Although the new Virginia memorial to Dr. King will be beautiful and meaningful, it could equally well have shown him applauding two lawyers, Joe Jordan and Thurgood Marshall, as they sought justice for a poor black woman in the United States Supreme Court.
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Dr. King declared in 1957, AGive us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches of the south who will do justly and love mercy...@-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
