BIG ELECTION OF 1960
Long-Awaited Historic Vote Spawns a Family's Legacy
Less than two days away from the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, and still I am in awe of the Nov. 4, 2008 election results. Considering where this country was 48 years ago, I hadn't seen its outcome coming.
In the Southwest Louisiana city of Lake Charles, population 63,000-plus, Friday, Oct. 7, 1960, was the end of another ordinary workweek, capped off that evening with the television broadcast of the second of four Kennedy-Nixon debates.
Issue No. 1 for Sen. John F. Kennedy had been the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Vice President Richard M. Nixon had made much to-do over Kennedy’s youth and inexperience, insisting he could not be trusted.
Routine as the day seemed for residents, it was a defining moment for Mrs. Alce Nash, my mother, who early that morning had registered to vote for the first time.
She was 33, a child of The Great Depression, daughter of a cotton farmer. A wife of a World War II veteran-turned-oil refinery worker, homeowner and stay-home mom of six. A born Catholic and Southerner – and an African American of Creole heritage.
Fueled after the Depression by the growing petrochemical industry, Lake Charles, the bustling seat of Calcasieu Parish, about 60 miles
from the Gulf of Mexico, had become an economic enticement around the state for those in search of a better life.
My parents had laid down roots there after the war. For my mother, finally having the right to vote along with my Dad in the upcoming presidential election made her feel privileged, meant that her family would move closer to living the American Dream.
Getting there hadn’t been easy. Though the 15th and 19th amendments granting blacks and women voting rights had long been enacted, many Southern blacks, women especially, were reluctant to participate, leery of the process and afraid of repercussions, my mother had explained in later years.
Mama died prematurely in 1982 at 55. She carried in her wallet the worn 1960 voter’s registration card until the day she passed away. Through her experience she gave her descendants a strong voting legacy.
During Jim Crow in the Deep South, underhanded voting tactics created frustration for black people. The poor were disqualified from registering because they couldn’t afford high poll taxes. Colored people and poor whites that couldn’t read and write and sign their name were barred. Powerful whites pressured the few eligible Negroes that had means and education into voting the interests of those controlling the polls.
Distrust of the process “was all hush-hush, but it was there,’’ says my mother’s youngest sister, Emily Lawrence, 69, now a Californian. (My aunt and I chatted by phone last month during her visit to Louisiana.) “I guess the thought was that your vote wouldn’t count, and even if it did, was it worth risking your life? At that time, there was talk about poll violence in other states.’’
In the Southwest Louisiana city of Lake Charles, population 63,000-plus, Friday, Oct. 7, 1960, was the end of another ordinary workweek, capped off that evening with the television broadcast of the second of four Kennedy-Nixon debates.
Issue No. 1 for Sen. John F. Kennedy had been the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Vice President Richard M. Nixon had made much to-do over Kennedy’s youth and inexperience, insisting he could not be trusted.
Routine as the day seemed for residents, it was a defining moment for Mrs. Alce Nash, my mother, who early that morning had registered to vote for the first time.
She was 33, a child of The Great Depression, daughter of a cotton farmer. A wife of a World War II veteran-turned-oil refinery worker, homeowner and stay-home mom of six. A born Catholic and Southerner – and an African American of Creole heritage.
Fueled after the Depression by the growing petrochemical industry, Lake Charles, the bustling seat of Calcasieu Parish, about 60 miles
from the Gulf of Mexico, had become an economic enticement around the state for those in search of a better life.My parents had laid down roots there after the war. For my mother, finally having the right to vote along with my Dad in the upcoming presidential election made her feel privileged, meant that her family would move closer to living the American Dream.
Getting there hadn’t been easy. Though the 15th and 19th amendments granting blacks and women voting rights had long been enacted, many Southern blacks, women especially, were reluctant to participate, leery of the process and afraid of repercussions, my mother had explained in later years.
Mama died prematurely in 1982 at 55. She carried in her wallet the worn 1960 voter’s registration card until the day she passed away. Through her experience she gave her descendants a strong voting legacy.
During Jim Crow in the Deep South, underhanded voting tactics created frustration for black people. The poor were disqualified from registering because they couldn’t afford high poll taxes. Colored people and poor whites that couldn’t read and write and sign their name were barred. Powerful whites pressured the few eligible Negroes that had means and education into voting the interests of those controlling the polls.
Distrust of the process “was all hush-hush, but it was there,’’ says my mother’s youngest sister, Emily Lawrence, 69, now a Californian. (My aunt and I chatted by phone last month during her visit to Louisiana.) “I guess the thought was that your vote wouldn’t count, and even if it did, was it worth risking your life? At that time, there was talk about poll violence in other states.’’
When Kennedy arrived, so did a greater urgency among the disadvantaged to take part in the process. Among African Americans, Kennedy represented a new spirit, as blacks slowly began inching away from strict segregation. The Supreme Court had overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Brown v. Board of Education decision emerged. With the help of an Eisenhower Administration Justice Department voting rights’ policy, separate but equal was taking on wider interpretation.
To retrace Mama’s steps that October day based on family storytelling (I was only 7), that morning, she woke up at 5:30 and put on a pot of Seaport chicory coffee. My Dad was due in from the graveyard shift at Cities Service Oil Refinery Co. in an hour, and her brood would be waking up for breakfast and the school day.
To retrace Mama’s steps that October day based on family storytelling (I was only 7), that morning, she woke up at 5:30 and put on a pot of Seaport chicory coffee. My Dad was due in from the graveyard shift at Cities Service Oil Refinery Co. in an hour, and her brood would be waking up for breakfast and the school day.
Slow and Deliberate Change
After seeing four of us off to classes, she and Daddy, dressed in their Sunday best, traveled about 15 minutes with the two younger boys in the family’s '56 Chevy to the downtown courthouse. Entering through the “Colored’’ entrance in the rear, she would register to vote.
By all accounts, she and Daddy intentionally played down the historic moment in the presence of whites they encountered in the court house building. They returned home and eventually voted Nov. 8.
“When Kennedy came along, it seemed to change everything,’’ says Mrs. Lawrence, my aunt, recalling the excitement in rural St. Landry Parish where my mother was born and raised, about 100 miles east of Lake Charles.
In 1959 and ’60, when my aunt wasn't going to school or working on my grandparents’ Opelousas, LA. farm, she and other 11th and 12th graders at the black high school were volunteering to help illiterate adults learn how to read and fill out voter registration forms and practice signing their names.
By all accounts, she and Daddy intentionally played down the historic moment in the presence of whites they encountered in the court house building. They returned home and eventually voted Nov. 8.
“When Kennedy came along, it seemed to change everything,’’ says Mrs. Lawrence, my aunt, recalling the excitement in rural St. Landry Parish where my mother was born and raised, about 100 miles east of Lake Charles.
In 1959 and ’60, when my aunt wasn't going to school or working on my grandparents’ Opelousas, LA. farm, she and other 11th and 12th graders at the black high school were volunteering to help illiterate adults learn how to read and fill out voter registration forms and practice signing their names.
Kennedy energized once disenfranchised blacks. He pledged a New Frontier and space exploration and vowed to grow the economy. There also was the promise of his age. Black Americans were convinced that Kennedy’s youth and “Yankee’’ roots would better equip him to preside over the inevitable groundswell of civil rights activism.
Older black women were reticent, Aunt Emily explains. “Women knew their place. It wasn't in the voting booth.’’ Staff from the parish registrar’s office and volunteers in the community worked hard to convince would-be voters that voting was a right and that women didn't need permission from their husbands, my aunt recalls.
Older black women were reticent, Aunt Emily explains. “Women knew their place. It wasn't in the voting booth.’’ Staff from the parish registrar’s office and volunteers in the community worked hard to convince would-be voters that voting was a right and that women didn't need permission from their husbands, my aunt recalls.
Quiet Heroes and Unsung Champions
In Lake Charles, similar steps took place. It’s likely that my mother had been turned away in previous attempts to register when she had been unable to recite verbatim the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. This only was hearsay. Th
e
e memory was too painful for her to retell, I suppose. But I have a clearer understanding of why in our schoolwork she had browbeaten us into memorizing the Preamble and The Gettysburg Address. To this day I can spout both at a moment’s notice.
Voting the first time was sacred though anticlimactic, Mama once confessed. Conquering the registration hurdle had been the greater triumph, and the Election Day result was even more exalting. Her vote had counted. The Life Magazine January ’61 issue heralding the inauguration remained the centerpiece on the living room coffee table a year after the vote.
The fortitude ignited by the Kennedy-Nixon race had a lasting effect on that generation and the future. After the 1960 vote and the passage of the voting rights bill in ‘65, my once reserved mother and my father became uncompromisingly active in the Democratic Party, volunteering to give voters rides on Election Day, canvassing neighborhoods to get out the vote, working the precincts and preaching the gospel, according to the founding fathers, of a most precious citizen’s right.
Voting the first time was sacred though anticlimactic, Mama once confessed. Conquering the registration hurdle had been the greater triumph, and the Election Day result was even more exalting. Her vote had counted. The Life Magazine January ’61 issue heralding the inauguration remained the centerpiece on the living room coffee table a year after the vote.
The fortitude ignited by the Kennedy-Nixon race had a lasting effect on that generation and the future. After the 1960 vote and the passage of the voting rights bill in ‘65, my once reserved mother and my father became uncompromisingly active in the Democratic Party, volunteering to give voters rides on Election Day, canvassing neighborhoods to get out the vote, working the precincts and preaching the gospel, according to the founding fathers, of a most precious citizen’s right.
A Legacy for a Louisiana Family
“The country passed through challenging times back then. Kennedy’s assassination. Selma. March on Washington. Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy. Then, Roe v. Wade and Bakke (University of California v. Bakke),’’ Aunt Emily lists off. “So much changed, and we all wanted to have a part in it so that we could make it better for our children and their children.
“When I reflect back, I think about how similar these times are. In 2004, I got so angry at young people when they told me, ‘I don’t need to vote. It’s just one vote.’ I screamed back at them, ‘Your vote counts, and people died and fought hard for that vote.’ Hopefully, this time they got the message. This (2008) election is very important.’’
Much has changed since my mother’s Depression-era girlhood. She and my father and many other African Americans of the time helped redefine the once Jim Crow- influenced Democratic Party in the South. They have passed the baton.
In this post 2008 Election Day time, parallels to 1960 can not be overlooked. Barack Obama’s candidacy has fired up a new breed of citizens dramatically similar to the grass roots electorate JFK inspired.
Still, the idea of change looms as large as the notion of how little has not changed. This election season with its disturbing news accounts of robo calls, vote fraud, race baiting, faulty machines, assassination attempts and underhanded campaigning maneuvers, remind the voting public of how much more this country has to grow up.
That my mother’s children and grandchildren in 2008 could choose to vote in primary elections for the first viable woman candidate for president, and on Nov. 4, could help to elect the first black U.S. president, has no doubt exceeded her dreams.
“When I reflect back, I think about how similar these times are. In 2004, I got so angry at young people when they told me, ‘I don’t need to vote. It’s just one vote.’ I screamed back at them, ‘Your vote counts, and people died and fought hard for that vote.’ Hopefully, this time they got the message. This (2008) election is very important.’’
Much has changed since my mother’s Depression-era girlhood. She and my father and many other African Americans of the time helped redefine the once Jim Crow- influenced Democratic Party in the South. They have passed the baton.
In this post 2008 Election Day time, parallels to 1960 can not be overlooked. Barack Obama’s candidacy has fired up a new breed of citizens dramatically similar to the grass roots electorate JFK inspired.
Still, the idea of change looms as large as the notion of how little has not changed. This election season with its disturbing news accounts of robo calls, vote fraud, race baiting, faulty machines, assassination attempts and underhanded campaigning maneuvers, remind the voting public of how much more this country has to grow up.
That my mother’s children and grandchildren in 2008 could choose to vote in primary elections for the first viable woman candidate for president, and on Nov. 4, could help to elect the first black U.S. president, has no doubt exceeded her dreams.
