Civil rights activist Robert Moses paid a visit to Promise Arizona on Monday night to speak about the importance of voting and civic engagement.
In the 1960s, Moses worked to register disenfranchised black voters in Mississippi, where he was beaten and arrested. He was one of the leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee and the main organizer of the Freedom Summer campaign in 1964, where three civil rights workers were killed.
Promise Arizona is a faith-based political organization that serves primarily Latino community members. Some of their activities include leadership development and education forums. Promise Arizona’s lecture was held at the Primera Iglesia United Methodist Church.
Dr. Moses began the evening by playing the song “Room in the Circle” by Bernice Johnson Reagon, which tells the story of African Americans in the United States trying to fit into society.
He moved on to discuss the United States’ history of struggle to define who was included in “We the People,” from the preamble of the Constitution.
“The problem in this country has is that there is no ‘we,’” Moses said.
Moses explained his definition of “We the People” as anyone who called the United States their home, regardless of whether or not they were born there.
“Anybody who lives in this country and takes it as their home, there is a place for them,” Moses said.
The discussion then moved to a recent bill proposed in the Arizona House of Representatives.
The bill in question, House Bill 2023, makes it a Class 6 felony for anyone except a family member to take a ballot of someone else to a mailing box or to the ballot box.
Moses then shifted the conversation from modern day voting rights to how minorities had been disenfranchised over the course of history. Moses specifically referenced Senator Benjamin Tillman, who gave a speech before the Senate in 1900 about what happened to blacks in the South after Reconstruction. In his speech, Senator Tillman spoke of how the Democratic Party violently took over the South politically through violence and intimidation.
“Tillman was able to say what he said about black people because, after the Civil War, the country agreed that blacks were to be subordinated,” Moses said.
Moses said that the end of the this period came in 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson won landslide reelection. Moses then opened up the conversation to the rest of the group members. They shared stories of personal struggle and how they fit into the struggle of what “We the People” meant.
“If you’re brown and you live in this state, it doesn’t matter if you have papers or not,” said Claudia Faudoa, an event attendee. “You won’t be treated the same as white people.”
