Hundreds mark MLK holiday outside SC capitol

JEFFREY COLLINS

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Hun­dreds of peo­ple ral­lied Mon­day out­side the South Car­olina capi­tol to honor the Mar­tin Luther King Jr. hol­i­day and protest the state’s voter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law.

While ral­lies in pre­vi­ous years have often been focused on protest­ing the Con­fed­er­ate flag that flies out­side the State­house near a memo­r­ial for Con­fed­er­ate sol­diers, the atten­tion this year has turned to the voter ID law.

The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment has rejected the law. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion said it didn’t pass muster under the 1965 vot­ing rights act, which out­lawed dis­crim­i­na­tory prac­tices that pre­vented blacks from vot­ing. On Mon­day, marchers car­ried signs that read: “Voter ID(equals)Poll Tax.”

U.S. Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder was among those slated to speak.

William Bar­ber, pres­i­dent of the North Car­olina NAACP, spoke dur­ing a morn­ing prayer ser­vice and left lit­tle doubt that the law would be the day’s focus. He spoke of the many black pio­neers who gave their lives so their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren could vote, refer­ring to civil rights icons like Medgar Evers. He also referred to three South Car­olina State Uni­ver­sity stu­dents gunned down by police dur­ing a civil rights protest in 1968.

Bar­ber said it was a crit­i­cal time to make sure hard-fought vot­ing rights are not lost.

“We are here to stand up, not to back down,” Bar­ber said.

Sev­eral other states have enacted laws sim­i­lar to the one passed in South Car­olina, which requires vot­ers to show a photo ID before cast­ing bal­lots. Texas, Alabama, Kansas, Mis­sis­sippi, Rhode Island, Ten­nessee and Wis­con­sin are among them.

Such laws already were on the books in Geor­gia and Indi­ana, and they were approved by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s Jus­tice Depart­ment. Indiana’s law, passed in 2005, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

Crit­ics have likened the laws to the poll taxes and tests used to pre­vent blacks from vot­ing dur­ing the civil rights era. Sup­port­ers, many of whom are Repub­li­cans, say such laws are needed to pre­vent fraud.

In Holder’s pre­pared remarks Mon­day, which were released by his office before he spoke, the nation’s top attor­ney pledged to make the nation’s elec­tions sys­tem more acces­si­ble to U.S. cit­i­zens. Holder dis­agreed with those who say parts of the Vot­ing Rights Act are no longer necessary.

“I wish this were the case. But the real­ity is that — in juris­dic­tions across the coun­try — both overt and sub­tle forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion remain all too com­mon,” he said.

“And though nearly five decades have passed since Dr. King shared his vision from the moun­tain­top — despite all the progress we’ve made, the bar­ri­ers we’ve bro­ken down, and the divi­sions we’ve healed — as a nation, we have not yet reached the Promised Land.”

Cities across the U.S. were host­ing ral­lies and other events to mark the hol­i­day. In Wash­ing­ton, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and his fam­ily were com­mem­o­rat­ing the day with a vol­un­teer ser­vice project at a local school. The fam­ily greeted vol­un­teers and then helped build book­shelves in the school’s library. The pres­i­dent said there was no bet­ter way to cel­e­brate King’s life than to spend the day help­ing others.

Wash­ing­ton is home to the Mar­tin Luther King Jr. memo­r­ial, where some braved tem­per­a­tures around 30 degrees Mon­day to visit the 30-foot statue of King.

Dorothy Drake, 61, and her sis­ter Beu­lah Ashby, 59, were vis­it­ing the memo­r­ial from North Car­olina. The women both went to seg­re­gated schools as chil­dren and remem­bered not being able to eat inside cer­tain restau­rants, sit­ting on the back of the bus, and not being allowed to stay in cer­tain hotels.

Ashby said she was proud that King now stands among the pres­i­dents hon­ored with memo­ri­als in the nation’s capital.

“I woke up this morn­ing, and it gave me great joy to know that I was com­ing here,” Ashby said. “I know it’s a piece of stone, and I know it’s one man, but it was just pride. Pride. Hap­pi­ness. Joy, in just know­ing that I could come and just have a piece of that his­tory, the chang­ing in the world.”

Posted by AP News on Jan 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.