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Upcoming Events:

1. Tues. Feb. 9 -- School Board Elections  (link to Voters Guide)

2. Sun. Feb. 14 -- 90th Anniversary Celebration (details soon)

3. Sat. March 6 -- "Place Matters" Health Equity Forum  (This forum has been re-scheduled from the original date, Sat. January 30, due to extreme weather conditions across the state -- please see details below)

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March 6 Showing of "Place Matters" Health Equity Forum

In cooperation with the Oklahoma Health Equity Campaign, the Oklahoma State Department of Health, Turning Point Oklahoma and the YWCA of Greater Tulsa, LWV Metro Tulsa is sponsoring a showing and discussion of the first segment from "Unnatural Causes," a video series on the causes of disparity in health in the U.S. and what we can do about it.

RSVP to reserve a box lunch ($8) by noon on Friday, March 5. E-mail info@lwvtulsa.org or  call  918-747-7933 to reserve lunch.

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  No right or privilege of citizenship is more   powerful or more fragile than the right to vote.

- Jim Hill, LWV Metro Tulsa Co-President

         In October of this year, I was traveling in Southern Alabama.  Near the famous old Southern City of Selma, I made a side trip there.  Selma is infamous as a focal point of the Voting Rights Marches of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s.  The Edmund PettusBridge over the Alabama River, towers above the downtown.  It is quiet there now.  The downtown is in disrepair and decline.

 It was here on the Sunday morning of March 7, 1965 that marchers started their journey of 50 miles to Montgomery, the State Capitol.  They were protesting the efforts of the White Citizen’s Council and the Ku Klux Klan in blocking voter registration of black citizens.

 The march went six blocks before reaching the Edmund Pettus Bridge where local police and State Troopers waited.  The marchers were clubbed, bullwhipped and tear-gassed.  Two days later, on the evening of March 9, one of the marchers, James Reeb, a young white Unitarian minister from Boston, was brutally beaten.  He was refused care at the Selma hospital and was taken to Birmingham, two hours away.  He died on March 11.

On March 15, 1965 President Lyndon Johnson went before a joint session of Congress to present the Voting Rights Act.  The legislation did pass and became the law of the land.  It is interesting to note that before the Selma March, Johnson had told the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. voting rights would not pass the congress.

It is quiet in Selma now.  The Bridge is an icon even without its historical significance.  There is little evidence of the violence that took place there.  A tiny crude museum in a store front, on Side Street tells the story of the march.  Across the bridge from the town, a park memorializes the marchers.  It is said that they fled to this area and hid under the bridge to avoid brutality and arrest.

Next year will mark the 90th anniversary of the passage of 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.  Next year, we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the League of Women Voters.  And next year we must remember that 45 years ago we were still fighting and dying in this country to insure that the very fundamental right to vote would not be denied to any citizen.

 Next year, the League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Tulsa WILL celebrate.  We will celebrate the history of our Local League. We will continue the battle to protect access to the ballot box.  Voter ID is already on our agenda, but I think voter apathy must be an equal concern.

No right or privilege of citizenship is more powerful or more fragile than the right to vote.