60 years after ‘Bloody Sunday,’ Trump’s order on voting rights is Jim Crow all over | Opinion

Is it me, or did President Donald Trump purposefully select the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to announce his overhaul of America’s elections, which will require proof of citizenship? Was he even aware of the Day’s significance to millions of free people around the world?

“That is a long title for a single day, but a very few words for a chapter of history that lasted for more than four centuries and devastated countless millions of human lives that mattered – and still do,” said Gene Tinnie, a former chair of the Virginia Key Park Trust.

He said the crimes of slavery made the perpetrators “… fabulously materially wealthy, with fortunes that still continue to this day. March 25 is not a day to be allowed to slip by unacknowledged, especially in these times.”

But the day did slip by for many. Only a few Black men, women and children know there is a commemorative day of remembrance for the millions of our ancestors who suffered on the slave ships, only to find more suffering once they set foot in their new homeland.

So, I can’t blame the president if he didn’t know about the International Day of Remembrance, honoring the memory of a chapter of American history that lasted for more than four centuries.

But even if the president did know about the commemorative day, it didn’t stop him from trying to turn back the clock on that day, on a freedom that many former slaves and their ancestors died for — freedom to vote.

To me, his order, which he signed Tuesday, is just another attack on our freedom and a blatant move to make Mr. Trump the dictator that he longs to be. Remember what said he during his campaign — vote for him and you will never have to vote again.

He didn’t hide his motives. He told us upfront what his plan was. In the words of the late Maya Angelou, we should have believed him the first time.

We all know Mr. Trump’s campaign motto — Make America Great Again. Well, it seems he wants to reach this goal by snatching away basic freedoms. His order includes requiring voters to present documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to register to vote in federal elections.

Such an order, if carried out, would impact millions of citizens, especially the poor and many Blacks who do not have a passport or any other form of federal identification that carries their picture. Will there also be a literacy test given?

Remembering ‘Bloody Sunday’

It was only 60 years ago that more than 600 civil rights protesters, seeking to secure Black voting rights, were viciously beaten as they attempted to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on their way to Montgomery, the state’s capital. The marchers were so horribly beaten, the day — March 7, 1965 — was dubbed “Bloody Sunday.”

Pictures from that day — fire hoses turned on peaceful marchers, snarling dogs attacking men and women, deputies on horseback charging into the crowd swinging “clubs, whips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire,” according to a History Channel report — are a testament to the battles Black adults have endured to get the right to vote.

Many of the protesters carried the scars to their grave. John Louis, then 25 and one of the march’s leaders, was one of them. Lewis, who would go on to become a longtime U.S. House member in Georgia, later testified in court that a state trooper hit him in the head with his nightstick and kept beating him as he tried to get up.

The Bloody Sunday violence was done for one reason — to stop Blacks from getting the right to vote, a right the 15th Amendment enshrined in the U.S. Constitution when it was ratified in 1870. But nearly 100 years later, Jim Crow laws in the South created obstacle after obstacle to prevent Black men and women from voting.

So now, with this new executive order, I’m concerned that turning the clock back to the Jim Crow days is what Mr. Trump means when he pushes his motto, “Make America Great Again.” Can he really mean that the days of segregation will again be in vogue?

Already, we are seeing signs pointing in that direction. Books are being banned – books by award-winning Black authors like Toni Morrison and the deleting of Black history from our children’s schoolbooks and classes.

Do we really want to go back to those blood-washed days when we Blacks had to protest and fight for our very existence? Do we want to make America “great again”? Or do we want to make our country GREATER? I vote for the latter.

As Americans, we have come a long way. We’ve gone from slavery and Jim Crow and segregation to electing a Black president when Barack Obama was voted into office in 2008. And last year, we had Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black woman, run for president.

But we’ve also witnessed many things that have torn our country asunder. Look no further than the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when a mob of Trump supporters, egged on by his false claim that his loss to Sen. Joe Biden stemmed from a stolen election, mobbed and desecrated the U.S. Capitol. Five people died , including a Capitol Police officer who was assaulted by the rioters and died the next day.

People are losing their jobs because our president has put in place as his advisor the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. Now, that really scares me. Musk is a man who grew up under Apartheid in South Africa, where Black South Africans were brutalized for decades.

South African Blacks fought and died to be free under Apartheid. Many were killed and others were thrown into prison (let us not forget the great Nelson Mandela, who spent more than two decades in prison for opposing Apartheid). This is the kind of government that Musk grew up under. I don’t know him, but I have never read anywhere that he opposed Apartheid.

And while Trump signed the executive order to overhaul the voting rights of Americans, it would not surprise me one bit if Musk had something to do with his decision.

It is time now to really wake up, America. This is no time to sleep in. We must be watchful and prayerful while we figure out a way to get back on the right track.

We can rise again. Remember Mandela, who rose from the ashes of prison to become the president of South Africa, a country that had oppressed him and his people for decades.

Just as He was then, God is still in control, and He can change minds and directions.