Amazon.com Widgets JACKSON, Miss.--The shocking news of the passing of Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jacknson, Mississippi on Tuesday, February 25, 2014, not only went viral, but global. Lumumba was Jackson’s mayor but the world’s premiere freedom fighter. A gentleman’s gentleman, he didn’t have to overthrow the government in a military stance to seize control of Mother Africa’s children’s future. For Brother Chokwe Lumumba, it was always ‘Nation Time’ and ‘Free the Land!’ A true visionary, Lumumba worked within the confines of the judicial and legislative branches of government to achieve self determination for the masses. First, as a civil rights trial lawyer, both in Jackson and in his hometown of Detroit, MI, then as a city councilman representing Ward 2 before taking the helm as mayor of the city of…
Black State Legislators from Reconstruction to the Present Legislative Black Caucuses The National Black Caucus of State Legislators The modern Voting Rights movement can be traced to the 1944 decision of the US Supreme Court in Smith v. Allright to outlaw the White Primary in Texas.http://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/archive/html/vce/features/0503_01/smith.html . This was a key decision argued by Thurgood Marshall. Prior to the Court’s ruling, the Democratic party in the South (Dixiecrats) was allowed to set its own internal rules. This meant that the outcome of the Democratic Primary determined the outcome of the election. Therefore, all white primaries meant that African Americans were effectively excluded from political power. http://books.google.com/books?id=npem7JszWfkC&pg=PA108&dq=smith+v+allright&num=8&client=internal-uds&cd=1&source=uds . As African Americans returning from fighting abroad in World War 11 began to advocate for more political representation, the white power structure (in the South) reacted to…
