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The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court tried to keep Hispanics from voting in his native Arizona as a young lawyer; that experience must have served him well when Bush v. Gore came before hims years later.
Despite all this, black Americans voted with the American majority on Election Day 2000. NAACP efforts then helped increase the African-American share of the total vote by 25 percent or more in four states. Two million more voters cast ballots in 2000 than did in 1996. Turnout in Texas increased 50 percent, in Florida by 60 percent, and in Missouri by a whopping 124 percent! More than a million African-Americans voted here in Florida, accounting for 15 percent of the total - a state record.
We did less well in 2002 - and you saw the result.
But what happened in the 2002 midterms elections also illustrated the politicization of patriotism and terrorrism. In the Georgia Senate race, the Republicans used false patriotism to destroy a true patriot
The incumbent, Max Cleland, is was a Vietnam War veteran. He lost his right arm and both legs in battle. He also lost his Senate seat - when his opponent questioned his patriotism. Cleland had voted against the Homeland SEcurity Act because it didn't provide protection for workers' rights.
His opponent rand an ad with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Sadam Hussein, implying the ware veteran and triple amputee didn't love his country enough to help in the nation's fight against terrorists.
Republican Senator John McCain called the add "worse than discraceful, it's reprehensible."xxv
If Hispanics, blacks and whites turnout in 2004 in the same percentages as they did in 2000, the no-show National Guardsman in the White House and his draft avoiding Vice President will lose by three million votes. xxvi
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That's why voter registration and voter turnout must be a top priority for every Branch and every State Conference from now to election day. The countdown starts now. If a Branch isn't registering voters and isn't preparing now for grassroots turnout program next year, it isn't doing its jobs.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "You are what you do!" What you do between now and election day next year will decide who you are - and will decide what kind of world we live in.
We've invited all of the Democratic candidates for President to a forum here. By their presence and their words, they will let you know that they are interested in your vote.
We invited the Republican candidate for President too, but he can't come. He couldn't come last year when we were in his home state - and so was he. He couldn't come to our Annual Convention in New Orleans two years ago either.
But he did come to our convention in Baltimore - when he was a candidate, and we hope he will honor the invitation we intend to issue next year.
We are and always have been nonpartisan. We've never endorsed a candidate for public office or a political party, and we never will.
But being nonpartisan doesn't mean being non-critical. And it doesn't even mean criticizing all parties equally. If the Democrats were doing anything, we'd criticized them too.
But one party controls the presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court - all three branches of the national government. And the press increasingly reflects and reinforces this one-party control.
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One party repeatedly plays the race card, appealing to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality.
In coded racial appeals, they embrace Confederate leaders as patriots and wallow in a victim mentality.
They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division. They celebrate Martin Luther King and misuse his message.
Their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon.
Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side.
Speaking of the Confederate swastika, my former home state of Georgia rates last in the nation in SAT scores. Before they think about about raising the Confederate flag again, they ought to raise their SAT scores!
We meet as our nation seems doomed to a punishing war of occupation in Iraq, war whose rationale has changed repeatedly - before it started and today. Theirs was an ever shifting and constantly rotating reason for war - first regime change, then ties to terrorrism, and then the invisible weapons of mass destruction.
Last fall the NAACP opposed unilateral war against Iraq, but we do not confuse opposition to the war with a lack of support for our fighting forces. We commend the bravery and sacrifice of our women and men in uniform, who represent all races and faiths.
More than most of American society, our military reflects the diversity of our nation. We mourn the lives lost, almost 20% of them black, almost twice the percentage of African-American in the population.
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We have invited Specialist Shoshanna Johnson, the brave African American woman taken prisoner during the war, to attend our Military Affairs Dinner Wednesday night
But we'll continue to have our say.
At the NAACP, we long ago learned our lesson about not speaking out in times of war.
In the summer of 1918, on the eve of America's entry into World War I, one of our founders, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, urged blacks "to forget our special grievances and close ranks shoulder to shoulder with our fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy."
The criticism he faced then was immediate and loud. He quickly reversed his position and realized then - as we must realize now - that when wars are fought to save democracy, the first casualty is usually democracy itself.
We ought to remember the words of Ohio Senator Robert Taft, who said two weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked:
"I believe there there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government."
And the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, who said in 1918,
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonous to the American public."
So we will continue to oppose any nominee to the federal courts who opposes us - such as William Pryor, whose nomination to this Circuit's Court of Appeals is pending. Pryor, currently Alabama's Attorney General,
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is a right wing extremist. He has consistently demonstated hostility toward civil rights and voting rights. His nomination is an affront and his confirmation would be a disaster
As war continues abroad, the attack on our liberties at home marches on.
We who kow firsthand the evils of racial profiling must not tolerate its use against others in the name of national security. We also know firsthand the evils of law enforcement choosing their targets based on advocacy and association.
We hav an attorne gerneral who has abandoned the "attorney" part of his title. He has cast aside civilian courts in favor of military tribunals. He has "seized for himself the power to monitor confidential attorney-client conversations without judicial oversight. The USA Patriot Act allows agents to seize business records, search a home or get information about a person's web surfing activity with minimal judicial review. It also allows the FBI to monitor telephone or email communications without demonstrating probable cause. xxvii
We ought to remind John Ashcroft that the holiday we celebrate each July 4th commemorates revolutionaries who threw off the chains of privilege and arrogant power that were then - and remain today - the primary threats to freedom and human advancement.
If a dead man beat John Ashcroft in 2000, sureley we can beat back his ideological assault on our Constitution.
Some Many of you remember when Senator Paul Wellstone addressed us at our convention in Minneapolis. Since last we met, we lost this powerful voice for the powerless. But he speaks to us still:
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