By Dominique Calhoun, 81st President of the National Bar Association
The National Bar Association, the nation’s oldest and largest association of Black lawyers and judges, has promoted equal justice under the law for almost a century. We have engaged in some of history’s fiercest civil rights battles, and we remain unafraid to go wherever the fight for justice calls – even if it means confronting the bitter state of affairs across the South.
For example, Florida’s regressive policies and civil rights violations over the last year made national headlines, causing several organizations to cancel events and conferences to avoid contributing to the economy of a state with such a harsh political climate. Admittedly, we considered it as well. But we elected to persist in our obligation to defend democracy alongside our local partners on the ground.
The National Bar Association will proceed in hosting our 34th Annual Wiley A. Branton Symposium in Miami on October 26-29, 2023. And to ensure attendees are intentional about how their time and money are spent during the weekend, we published a “Green Book” that features an extensive list of Black-owned businesses, restaurants, and community organizations in South Florida. However, we are just as intentional about addressing local threats to democracy.
Thus, on Saturday, October 28 from 2 -6 p.m., the NBA is holding a voting rights forum that will be open to the public. We are partnering with the NAACP and Hip-Hop Caucus to register and mobilize voters. And Florida State legislators like Sens. Geraldine Thompson and Shevrin Jones, and Reps. Ashley Gantt and Dotie Joseph will provide updates to the community on cruel voter suppression efforts coming out of the state legislature.
This type of local engagement is needed more than ever, especially since voting is the most fundamental right in a democracy. An act as sacred as prayer, voting empowers people to build the futures they wish to create. It renders everyday people a voice to speak truth to power and drive lasting change. But ever since Black Americans were granted the right to vote, loopholes in state laws across the South continued to disenfranchise Black voters through cruel measures such as felony disenfranchisement laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, all-white primaries, fraud, and blatant intimidation.
President Lyndon Johnson attempted to eliminate discrimination at the ballot box through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, however, America’s vile legacy of racism, white supremacy, and populism lingers on, and continues to hinder our path towards national progress.
We are at an inflection point in America, and the fragility of our longstanding democratic institutions is being exposed. It wasn’t long ago that we all witnessed an angry mob rush the United States Capitol Building and attempt to overthrow the government. Although their efforts on January 6, 2021, were unsuccessful, what couldn’t be achieved through violence that dark day is now being accomplished at a record pace in state legislatures across the country.
We cannot let them win!
Preserving democracy is a moral issue, not a political matter, and we must never surrender to this great moral challenge. We look forward to continuing the ongoing fight for democracy with our brothers and sisters in trenches across the nation. So, whether the fight takes us to Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi, or Texas, the National Bar Association will come prepared to defend freedom and equality with all of our might.
