Greene County Democrat

Tag: Democratic

  • Newswire : Remembering the Four Little Girls

    Four Spirits Sculpture in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, across the street from 16th. Baptist Church, the two boys killed on the same day, were added later.

    By April Ryan, NNPA White House Correspondent

     

    It is 62 years later after the death of the four little girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, just weeks after the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
    Democratic, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell said this anniversary reminds us to reflect on issues our forefathers fought for during the most powerful movement in this nation: civil rights, voting rights, and civil liberties. Twelve years ago, the four little girls received the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously: Addie Mae Collins, Dennis McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Carol Robertson.

    Shavon Arline-Bradley of the National Council of Negro Women says we are commemorating one of the most gruesome acts of violence in our country’s history, where 4 Black Girls from Birmingham, AL lost their lives at the hands of White Supremacists.” Dr. Amos Brown, pastor of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, says of the heinous, deadly bombing that there was “no respect for our humanity,” feeling the crime emphasizes “they don’t see us as being human.”

    Bradley also articulated,” Their sacrifice sparked the nation to come to grips with the harsh realities of what it meant to be Black in America.” The children were in church during the Sunday School hour when, “These innocent young girls sought to learn more about their faith and how to love thy neighbor as themselves,” when the deadly explosion occurred, adds Arline Bradley.

    She also said, “Today, as we celebrate their contribution to the freedoms we enjoy today, let us be reminded that we shall overcome and victory belongs to those of us that fight for liberty and justice for all.” Meanwhile, there is a fifth survivor, Sara Collins Rudolph,  Addie Mae’s sister, who lost her eyes and carries scars from the bombing.

    Two young boys Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson were also killed the same day in other parts of Birmingham and history has chosen to recognize them as part of the ‘hidden history’ of civil rights in the city.

     

  • Racial split defines MD.’s hotly contested Democratic Senate primary

    By Rachel Weiner and Scott Clement , Washington Post

    Edwards and Van Hollend

    Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen

    Maryland’s Democratic Senate race remains very much up for grabs three weeks before the primary, with voters sharply divided along racial lines, according to a new poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland. The rare open Senate seat, being vacated by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D) after 30 years, has sparked a heated and expensive battle between Reps. Donna F. Edwards and Chris Van Hollen. Edwards is trying to appeal to voters by emphasizing her inspiring personal story as a black single mother with an activist history. Her rival has responded with a bunch of endorsements from public office¬holders and a relentless focus on his legislative record.
    Faced with that choice, African American and white voters appear deeply split. Among all likely Democratic primary voters, Edwards leads Van Hollen by a statistically insignificant 44 percent to 40 percent. But likely black voters favor Edwards by a nearly 3-to-1 ratio. More than twice as many white voters support Van Hollen as back Edwards.
    While Edwards also leads among women, that split has racial underpinnings as well, according to the survey, which was conducted in partnership with U-Md.’s Center for American Politics and Citizenship. Van Hollen leads by 23 percentage points among white women. But that preference is quickly erased by Edwards’s 51-point lead with black women, many of whom seem drawn by her argument that she is best suited to understand their needs and fight for those needs in an overwhelmingly white, mostly male U.S. Senate.
    “Women get short¬changed a lot,” said Edwards supporter Jacqui Battle, 59, a black mother of two in Prince George’s County. “It means a lot that she’s where she is, at the level she is, in her career.”
    Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D) and several other black elected officials from Edwards’s home county have endorsed Van Hollen — an advantage he touts at every opportunity. But Edwards still leads in Prince George’s by 59 points. (Van Hollen is nearly as highly favored in his home of Montgomery County.)
    And despite extensive television ad campaigns and scores of visits and appearances, neither candidate holds a clear advantage in the Baltimore area, encompassing both the largely African American city and the whiter surrounding suburbs.
    Both Edwards and Van Hollen frequently invoke Mikulski, a revered figure both nationally and locally, and the first female Democrat elected to the Senate in her own right.
    Edwards notes that she, too, would make history as Maryland’s first black senator and the second female black senator. Van Hollen argues that he, like Mikulski, is a constituent-oriented and savvy politician.