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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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(11/25/00 Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper)
by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
We will long remember Rev. Hosea Williams and his contribution to our lives. His trademark denim overalls, red shirt and in-your-face eloquence on behalf of the disenfranchised and excluded would be difficult to forget.
In the years to come, history teachers will talk to their students about the provocative street organizer who often prepared the way for Dr. King during for the civil rights movement. Students will learn how Hosea Williams was jailed over 100 times so that we could be empowered and free.
Most of all, though, Americans will remember that Hosea Williams and now Congressman John Lewis were the young men who led that "Bloody Sunday" march across Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.
We will recall how the brave young people marching for voting rights were attacked by George Wallace’s state troopers and Sheriff Jim Clark’s deputies. The television footage of American citizens being beaten with billy clubs, whipped and gassed is indelibly imprinted upon America’s historical record.
It was those graphic pictures that convinced America that we were being denied the basic liberties most Americans took for granted. It was their sacrifice at Edmund Pettus Bridge that led directly to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Hosea Williams’ legacy, however, is far more than a courageous moment in time. His entire life exemplified commitment and action.
We should not forget the young Hosea Williams who won a Purple Heart while serving with General Patton during WWII – only to be beaten nearly to death upon his return for drinking from a "Whites Only" water fountain in Americus, Georgia.
We should not forget the Hosea Williams who raised himself from poverty through the power of education to become one of the first African Americans south of the Mason-Dixon Line to be hired as a federal chemist.
Nor should we forget Hosea Williams, the good father, who gave up his hard-won middle class lifestyle for civil rights work because he could not bear to tell his young children why they could not sit at a segregated lunch counter in Savanna.
Like most of us, Rev. Williams was a complex human being – not a stereotypical Hollywood hero. That, too, is part of his legacy.
After acting as the national mobilizer for the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, he served as a state and local official in Georgia. He also worked as a bail bondsman.
In later years, Rev. Williams managed to get himself arrested several times on DWI charges, but he also created the Atlanta organization that served 30,000 Thanksgiving dinners to poor and homeless people this week.
There is justice in the fact that, before he died from cancer on November 16, Hosea Williams witnessed the most compelling example of African American voting power in American history. The Americans of color whom he helped to empower cast the deciding votes in key states across the country.
In Florida, Rev. Williams learned, 893,000 African Americans voted – 363,000 more than in 1996. From Florida and elsewhere, however, he also heard the reports of racial profiling near polling places, dubious voter registration challenges and other acts of intimidation.
I doubt whether he was surprised – and I am certain that he would have taken to the streets from his hospital bed if he could have managed that final principled stand.
Because of his legacy, however, we now have a remedy even more powerful than street protests. Led by NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, serious and deliberate measures have been taken to document these voting complaints and refer them to the U.S. Department of Justice for appropriate action.
The evidence of wrongdoing will be evaluated under that same Voting Rights Act that Hosea Williams’ sacrifice helped to make possible. In due course, justice will be served – in the courts and in the Congress.
Hosea Williams, the often-jailed street fighter for justice, survived to transform the very laws that once oppressed him. As he lay dying last week, that reformed system of justice was moving into action.
Now, Hosea Williams can rest. We, whom he led toward justice, will act to uphold his legacy to us all.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
