CHARLOTTE — Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) used his speech to connect President Obama’s historic election to the movement that ended Jim Crow — and said Republican efforts to suppress the vote were also a throwback to that era.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said Thursday at the Democratic National Convention. “I’ve lived this before. Too many people struggled, suffered and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote.”
Obama’s race is rarely discussed much by his campaign these days, but Lewis offered a rare departure, describing the pride he felt in Obama’s election as someone who suffered brutal violence while protesting discriminatory laws in the South.
“A few years ago, a man from Rock Hill, inspired by President Obama’s election, decided to come forward,” he said. “He came to my office in Washington and said, ‘I am one of the people who beat you. I want to apologize. Will you forgive me?’ I said, ‘I accept your apology.” He started crying. He gave me a hug. I hugged him back, and we both started crying.”
Then the applause line: “This man and I don’t want to go back; we want to move forward!”
Lewis decried voter ID laws passed by Republican statehouses and similar crackdowns on voter registration and early voting, and connected them with the restrictions that kept blacks from voting in segregation era. Voting rights advocates warn that hundreds of thousands of disproportionately minority voters could be affected.
“Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting,” Lewis said. “They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House even bragged that his state’s new voter ID law is ‘gonna allow Gov. Romney to win the state.’ That’s not right, that’s not fair and that is not just.”
He urged citizens to respond by redoubling their dedication to voting in November.
“We must march to the polls like never before,” he said. “We must come together and exercise our sacred right. And together, on Nov. 6, we will re-elect the man who will lead America forward: President Barack Obama.”
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