Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.
Usually we look at it like, "Oh, black people couldn't vote in Mississippi because they had to take a literacy test." But one of the things you learn in the film is that there were major consequences for even trying to vote. You could be killed for trying to vote. You could definitely be fired from your job and many were, which is why so few black Mississippians even attempted to register early on. They put your name in the newspaper if you tried to register to vote.
Let's remind ourselves that offering an opportunity for somebody to register to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles has been required by federal law for decades now. We know it as motor voter. So whether it's motor voter and people registering on paper or online voter registration, we have the protocols in place to keep people who are not eligible to register to vote from registering, whether it's for citizenship status, whether it's for age or any other reason.
When only men could register to vote, we required only men to register for the draft. Today both sexes can vote, but only men must register for the draft.
People must understand that people were beaten, arrested, jailed, and some people were murdered, while attempting to register to vote, or to get others to register to vote.
Get out and vote. If you can't vote, then register other people to vote. Get people to the polls; make sure that people who need to vote can vote.
Pretty much all I say politically is I encourage people to register to vote.
Jesus is not from Georgia. Jesus does not speak English. And Jesus is not a member of the NRA.
I felt like my vote was the vote that put [Obama] into office. It was down to one vote, and that was going to be my vote. And that may not be true, but that's how much power it felt like I had.
Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.
They talked about how it was our rights as human beings to register and vote. I never knew we could vote before. Nobody ever told us.
The law says if you poison the water, you’ll die. The law says that if you poison the air, you’ll suffer. The law says if you degrade where you live, you’ll suffer... If you don’t learn that, you can only suffer. There’s no discussion with this law.
My cousin Georgia says that boys are like gazelles. She says the get alarmed when they get close to girls. And they have to leap off into the woods like gazelles in trousers. Or have I just made that up?
My mother-in-law says if you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat. That if you are a part of the group that is doing well in this system, you owe it to yourself and to others to look out for them and make sure you are always building a ladder for others to join you.
The group For Our Future's Sake will tour key marginal constituencies to ensure first that young people register to vote then, second, that they use that vote tactically to keep their hope of a final Brexit referendum alive.
One is not righteous who does much, but the one who, without work, believes much in Christ. The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this,' and everything is already done.