Floyd’s aunt set to speak in HS
Angela Harrelson, the maternal aunt of George Floyd, a Black man whose death while in custody of a white Minneapolis, Minn., police officer in late May sparked nationwide protests, is scheduled to speak in Hot Springs on Saturday.
The Arkansas Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission on Wednesday announced that Harrelson would be the keynote speaker at the 2020 “Get Out to Vote” statewide initiative Saturday.
She is scheduled to speak during the Hot Springs event, which will be held from 5-6:30 p.m. at the Hot Springs Farmers & Artisans Market, 121 Orange St.
“The program will include
nonpartisan voter registration and information to commemorate the upcoming 55th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” a news release said. The event will take place outdoors and is free and open to the public.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain especially in areas of significant community-based transmission,” the release said.
In 1964, King organized a voter-registration drive in Selma, Ala. “That day ended in violence, however, it set the foundation for the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” the release notes.
The commission, a state agency organized to teach Arkansans about King’s life and legacy, will launch G.O.T.V. — “Get Out to Vote” — a “nonpartisan, cooperative initiative to register more voters in response to recent reports of low voter turnout in local elections.”
“Grandma once said, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Therefore, it’s time for a change,” DuShun Scarbrough, executive director of the Arkansas Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, said in the release.
The “Get Out to Vote” campaign will be a “nonpartisan collaborative effort to encourage citizens to vote or get registered to vote to commemorate this great and important event in history. We will host outreach programs and initiatives in all four congressional districts of the state. Dr. King once said, ‘the most important step we can make is that short walk to the ballot box.’ Well-spoken by Dr. King who walked 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights with thousands from across the country,” the release said.
It is one of several events the commission has planned to commemorate The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which “applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote.”