These are the loses since January:
• 800,000 African Americans became unemployed in the last year.
• Black unemployment reached 7.3% before dropping to 6.6%.
• 2012 marked the first time Black voter turnout percentage exceeded white turnout.
• Voter turnout is highest for ages 65+ and lowest for ages 18-27.
• Over 900,000 Black voters did not participate in the Georgia gubernatorial election.
• 616,000 Black voters did not participate in the North Carolina election.
• Republicans won the House majority by a 7,000-vote margin across key races.
• Cheri Beasley lost a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by 401 votes.
Here’s something that was done to acquire the Voting Rights that are being dismantled across the country. Roland Martin advocates for “teach-ins” based on the SCLC citizenship education model.
Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries
Participants in the voter registration and citizenship education project.
The Citizenship School Program of the Highlander Folk School shaped the grassroots leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. The Voter Education Project (VEP) coordinated the voter registration campaigns of five civil rights groups—the Southern Christian Leadership Conference(SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the National Urban League. These efforts within the Movement enfranchised and empowered a segment of Southern black society that would have been untouched by demonstrations and federal voting legislation. Civil Rights activists in the Deep South, attempting to register voters, recognized the severe inadequacies of public education for black students and built parallel educational institutions designed to introduce black students to their rights as American citizens, develop local leadership and grassroots organizational structures.