Souls To the Polls has been a voting tradition in the Black Community for over 60 years. According to theconversation.com:Modern efforts picked up momentum during the years after World War II, especially during the era of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Most African Americans were denied the right to vote prior to the 1965 Voting Rights Act being signed into law. As a result, Black Americans were grossly underrepresented in the political system while simultaneously marginalized within the economy and social order through racial segregation laws.

In 1957, churches and civil rights organizations got together to sponsor the “Prayer Pilgrimage of Freedom” demonstration in Washington D.C. Organized to celebrate the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled school segregation unconstitutional, the event became a rallying cry for voting rights.

Speaking at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. framed the issue of voting, racial progress, and democracy in these terms:

“Give us the ballot and we shall no longer have to worry the Federal government about our basic rights.

"Give us the ballot and we will by the power of our vote write the laws on…the statute books of the southern states and bring to an end the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.

"Give us the ballot and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill.

"Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and have mercy.” This traditions has continued in the Black commuity every election cycle including this one. GET OUT AND VOTE!

 

 

Souls To The Polls