My Vote
The most consequential vote of my life occurred on October 26, 2024. Today, November 5, 2024, others will cast their vote.
I voted for Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris, current Vice President of the United States of America.
There are many reasons I voted and vote early. The later is self explanatory—no standing in long lines. As a historian, it was important for me to do it early.
Why I vote should be solely because it’s my right. But it isn’t. Here are two reasons why it isn’t.
These two reasons are among thousands of instances in which whites prevented African Americans from voting. Killing may be the least painful because there will be no more effort, no attempts. The 19th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1965 meant nothing to these whites. It’s meaningful to AA but not necessarily in practice as so many areas of America ignore the rights of those who don’t look like them.
Those who are frightened because of threats will always remember the threat, and they may have that fear so deeply embedded that they will never try again. They may secretly want to vote but memory of the intrusion, the threat. . . kills the willingness to risk opening the pain of exercising the right to vote.
Tomorrow, now today (it’s after midnight) Americans will cast their vote for one of the two candidates running for the highest office in the land. It’s predicted it may take a few days to know who won because of the variety of ways in which people can vote.
I’m looking forward to saying Madame President or just President Kamala Harris. History was made when she got the nomination. I am prepared for history to be made again.
It will be a day I cry because of all the ancestors who didn’t get to see it. I will cry for the newly found cousin who is on a respirator at this very moment, the cousin who would have voted the same as I but will never have that chance. She is already gone.
Though I cry tears of sadness for my ancestors—known and unknown—I’ll also cry tears of joy for those who’ll vote in the future.
Today will be a magnificent new moment in time and in the history of America.