By Lesley Barker
Today is Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 2020, in the
United States following a highly contested presidential campaign in a
super-charged season fraught with the COVID-19 pandemic and a new wave of civil
rights protests and counter-protests throughout the country. Without exception,
teachers all over Kentucky will be discussing the election, its procedures and
its results for the next several days if not weeks. This blog post does not
deal with the 2020 election per se. Instead, we will consider how three people
of faith from the past three hundred years have spoken out about voting: John
Wesley, Mary E. Britton and Martin Luther King, Jr. Wesley addressed the
behavior of the voters in the late eighteenth century. In the late nineteenth
century, Britton used biblical arguments to lobby for woman’s suffrage. In the
mid twentieth century, King itemized what the African American vote would
change for that community while promising that even if the effort to achieve
full suffrage cost lives, it was a worthy price to pay and one that was fully
Christian, in his opinion. Perhaps by introducing your students to these
historical perspectives, they will arrive at a more nuanced understanding of
the value of voting and about how people of faith have argued their civic
convictions from positions rooted in their faith.
John Wesley was one of the founders of Methodism. He lived
in England from 1703 to 1791 and traveled to Georgia in 1735. His statement on
voting gives guidance to voters. It was directed to people who were voting in
England but your students may benefit by discussing whether its message is
timely for the American electorate today. Wesley wrote this in his journal on
October 4, 1776: “I met those of our
society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them: 1) to vote,
without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy 2) to speak no
evil of the person they voted against, and 3) to take care their spirits were
not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.”[1]
Mary E. Britton was the first African American woman to teach
white students at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. She was also the first
woman to be licensed to practice medicine in Lexington, Kentucky. On July 7,
1887, Britton spoke at a Kentucky teachers’ conference in Danville, Kentucky,
in which she used biblical arguments for women’s suffrage. She referred to the
Old Testament woman prophet, Huldah, and to the Old Testament woman judge,
Deborah, as proofs that God considers men and women to be equal. She contrasted
this biblical record to other ancient societies which treated women as chattel
saying: “God’s thought of woman changed
matters, and the great change has been going on ever since”[2].
In her opinion, “The fundamental principle
of woman suffrage is, ‘That every human being has a right to mark out his or
her own destiny subject only to those restraints of society which are applied
to all alike’”[3].
This, she asserts, is a gift and, “Wherever
there is a gift, there is a prophecy pointing to its use, and a silent command
of God to use it. The possession of a gift is a charter conveying to the
possessor permission to use it”[4].
The use of the Bible as a persuasive tool is uncommon in today’s civic forum
but, in the late nineteenth century, Americans were more familiar with it and
more willing to accept it as a moral guideline. Your students may be interested
in thinking about what has changed about our culture to make these arguments unfamiliar
and less than compelling. They may also be challenged to consider learning
about and understanding the current array of faith-based perspectives on
current issues and events.
In 1870 all American men were guaranteed the right to vote when
the fifteenth amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted. This
amendment states: “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”[5]. In spite of this law, it took until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act
was passed for African Americans to safely and freely execute their rights to
vote. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Baptist pastor and civil rights leader
was among a large group of people who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in
Washington, DC, on May 17, 1957, three years after the Brown v. Board of Education suit ruled that segregated schools are
unconstitutional. Theirs was a “Prayer
Pilgrimage for Freedom”. Dr.
King addressed the crowd last. In his speech he linked civil rights reforms to
the right to vote for African Americans. He listed six things that would change
once African Americans were free to vote. The basic rights of African Americans
would be assured. An anti-lynching law would be passed and lynching would stop.
Violence would be controlled. Southern racism would not prevail among the legislators
because those elected would be devoted to justice. Judges would be elected to
serve in the South “who will do justly
and love mercy”, and governors would be elected who “have felt… the glow of the Divine”. Finally, Dr. King promised
that, with the ballot, “we will quietly
and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness” implement the integration
of the nation’s schools. As the Civil Rights Movement progressed, many people
suffered, some died, to enforce the fifteenth amendment by allowing African
Americans to both register to and actually vote. In closing, Dr. King said: “I realize that it will cause restless
nights sometime. It might cause losing a job; it will cause suffering and
sacrifice. It might even cause physical death for some. But if physical death
is the price that some must pay [and Dr. King did pay that price when he
was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968] to free their children from a permanent life of psychological death,
then nothing can be more Christian.”[6]
The Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project is
dedicated to producing resources about the Christian history of Kentucky and to
assist in creating an appropriate vocabulary to discuss this history in K-12
public schools. Mary Britton was an African American Kentucky suffragette from
the late nineteenth century. Her voice connects to other national voices in the
development of an American philosophy of voting. Her faith energized her perspective.
Our students can’t unpick her arguments without being given a vocabulary for
speaking of faith. Hence this project and blog.
[1]
John Wesley. The Journal of John Wesley.
Edited by Percy L. Parker. Moody Press 1951. ONLINE https://onlinechristianlibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/wesley_journal.pdf
ACCESSED 11/3/2020
[2]
Mary E. Britton. “1887 Speech by Mary E. Britton in Danville on Woman Suffrage”.
ONLINE https://h-net.org/node/2289/blog/ky-woman-suffrage/2574422/1887-speech-mary-e-britton-danville-woman-suffrage
ACCESSED 11/3/2020
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] “Fifteenth
Amendment”. The United States Constitution.
[6] Martin
Luther King, Jr. “Give Us the Ballot
Address Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom” 1957. ONLINE https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/give-us-ballot-address-delivered-prayer-pilgrimage-freedom
ACCESSED 11/3/2020
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