A Voteless People Is a Hopeless People

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Ashley B. Woods, our current Miss Black and Gold of Xi Epsilon Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated; would like to extend her help towards our national program: “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People”. During the 1930s prominent Alpha men created the national program, “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People” to register voters and raise awareness within the Black community about the importance of voting. Moreover, "A Voteless People is a Hopeless People" served as a catalyst for peaceful resistance against discriminatory policies concerning voting. The fifteenth amendment (1870) of the U.S. Constitution states in section 1: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. However, many black Americans had their right to vote abridged and denied through poll taxes and frivolous literacy tests at their respective polling facilities. Voting rights for black Americans weren’t fully realized until ninety-five years later with the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Miss Black and Gold of Xi Epsilon appreciates the history of our national program and seeks to involve herself with registering as many people as she can for the upcoming U.S. congressional races of 2014. She feels the rising issue of restrictive voting I.D. laws will be resolved by utilizing our national program, “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People”; and looks forward to reclaiming the dream our fraternity brother Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had in
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