Deidra Reese isn’t waiting for people to come to her to find out whether they are registered to vote.
With iPad in hand, Reese is going to community centers, homes and churches in nine Ohio cities, looking up registrations to make sure voters have proper ID and everything else they need to cast ballots on Election Day.
“We are not going to give back one single inch. We have fought too long and too hard,” said Reese, 45, coordinator of the Columbus-based Ohio Unity Coalition, an affiliate of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.
Reese is part of a cadre of Black women engaged in a wave of voting rights advocacy four years after the historic election of the nation’s first Black president. Provoked by voting law changes in various states, they have decided to help voters navigate the system – a fitting role, they say, given that Black women had the highest turnout of any group of voters in 2008.
“We’ve forgotten our mothers went to three jobs, picked us up from school, put the macaroni and cheese on the table, got up and got somebody registered to vote,” said actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, one of several women who participated in a strategy session during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference in the nation’s capital.
The political and financial power of Black women is one of the themes of this year’s event, which includes a keynote speech from first lady Michelle Obama.
“It’s time for us to lead the way because we voted in greater numbers than any other gender and race group last election, and we got to do the same this year,” said Elsie Scott, president and CEO of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
Turnout among women of all races is generally higher than for men. In 2008, about 69 percent of Black female voters went to the polls, an increase of 5.1 percentage points over 2004, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. That compares with 66.1 percent of white women.
The women invoke the name of abolitionist and women’s suffragist Sojourner Truth, and repeat civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer’s famous line – “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired” – as a rallying cry. They check to see who’s been purged from voter rolls or locate documents that voters need to get photo identification. All along, they remind voters of the time, before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when Black people were kept from voting.
To participate in the discussion online, visit the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation at ncbcp.org.
Suzanne Gambo is a writer with the Associated Press.
