My wife, Lynn, and I are one week into a month of driving across America. We left Northern Virginia and are headed to California and back.
It’s been a great opportunity to meet with two churches, and we look forward to meeting with other friends of Five Talents. I am quickly learning how big this country is, and I wish there were time to meet with more of you.
This last week was emotional as we spent time in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma Alabama and in Jackson Mississippi. There are extraordinary museums and monuments here related to the civil rights movement that started in the 1950s.
Lynn and I took this picture here of the church where congressman John Lewis started the 50-mile March in 1965 from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. That march helped lead to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act.
Please allow me to speak personally for a moment. So many beatings and deaths were part of the movement to allow everyone in our country to have a vote. At the time of the march in 1965, only 7% of black Americans had been allowed to register to vote in the area along the march path. Many of them were sharecroppers who were thrown out of their houses and off their land when they finally did register. One of those sharecroppers was a pregnant woman who was living in a tent city when it came time to deliver. She tried to go to the local hospital, but they turned her away, and she died.
So, I feel gratitude and excitement during this final week of voting in the United States. It is such an important right, and I’m grateful so many are turning out to vote nationwide. Regardless of which party you want to vote for, I encourage you all to exercise this wonderful right that many died for.
Until next Monday morning,
Dale Stanton-Hoyle,
Executive Director