Hillary Clinton should have gone to Selma.
Clinton, the polarizing politician who is the likely Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential race, skipped one of the nation’s most significant civil rights events in decades – and her absence was inexcusable.
President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, 100 members of Congress, former President George W. Bush, numerous civil right leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton and thousands of citizens – black and white – from across the country gathered to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” last week but Clinton was nowhere to be found in the state of Alabama.
Clinton was in Miami for an event for the Clinton Foundation but surely Bill Clinton could have held it down in Miami while Hillary appeared in Selma.
The Clintons have made civil rights the cornerstone of their legacies. Bill Clinton was affectionately known as America’s “first Black president” before Obama actually filled that role. At one point during the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary had more prominent African-Americans supporting her than Black folks supporting Obama.
If Clinton is serious about running for president – and she would need a sizable segment of the Black vote to win the election – then it would only seem prudent for Clinton to show up in Selma, sit on the stage with the other dignitaries, and show her support for civil rights legislation and restoring the Voting Rights Act.
In 2013, The U.S. Supreme Court eliminated section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which required states with histories of minority voter suppression to get permission from the Justice Department before changing voting laws.
“Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished, but we are getting closer,” Obama told the crowd. “Two hundred and thirty-nine years after this nation’s founding, our union is not yet perfect, but we are getting closer. Our job’s easier because somebody already got us through that first mile. Somebody already got us over that bridge.”
Hillary Clinton Wants Our Vote – So Why Wasn’t She In Selma? was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
