By Marsha Joyner

You probably know the story “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving; one thing that we remember is that Rip Van Winkle slept for twenty years. There is another point, which is almost completely overlooked. It was the sign in on a post.

When Rip Van Winkle went up into the mountain, the sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down twenty years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington. When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington he was amazed. He did not know who was in the picture or the United States. He was completely lost.

This reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story. While he was peacefully snoring, a revolution was taking place that would change the entire course of history and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep.

Yes, he slept through a revolution. And one of the great tragedies of modern life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a period of social change, and they fail to develop the new attitudes, and new mental responses, that new situation demands. They end up sleeping through the revolution.

“It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic.” Dr. King wrote.

“We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.”

Civil rights leaders understood that laws and court decisions prohibiting legally enforced discrimination would never, by themselves, make minorities full participants in the nation’s political life. Blacks would have to gain greater access to the voting booth if they were to achieve greater economic and political equality.

By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on “Bloody Sunday” March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators’ resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act. The combination of public revulsion over southern white violence and Johnson’s political skills brought Congress to pass the voting rights bill on August 5, 1965.

The law worked. Most southern states realized that they had reached the end of the line in their efforts to retain a segregated society, and voluntarily opened their registration lists to blacks.

Within a relatively short time, Blacks, who comprised a majority in parts of the South, were electing black mayors and sheriffs and supervisors. And former race baiters like George Wallace of Alabama would actively campaign for black votes.

Now in the 21st Century, we refer to basic human rights such as freedom of speech and association, liberty, the right to vote and equal treatment in court as civil rights, because they are fundamental rights that each and every citizen should not be denied on the basis of their sex, race, or religious belief.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Taylor Branch wrote: “Race is a powerful engine of dangerous myth in American history. To some degree, it is today: a lot of the Tea Party animus is undigested 1960’s resentment that people are called upon to act outside their comfort level with people from different backgrounds and races, and that government is forcing them to do this. And this is why they don’t like the government. And because it is subliminal and emotional, it’s not ever said directly. A fantasy is being fed to them: that if it weren’t for the government, they could be totally comfortable, would be wealthy and not have problems. It has a lot of a success-church mythology sprinkled with an awful lot of federal-government-is-the-instrument-of-scary-minorities-and-foreigners. Some of those same people are totally blind to all the benefits even to the white southerners that the Civil Rights movement brought to them”.

On January 8, 2011, nine days before the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday I read an article in the Afro-American Newspapers “Republicans Strip D.C.’s Voice and Vote in House Action.”

The measure was part of an opening day rules package that stripped Delegates Eleanor Homes Norton, (D- District of Columbia), Donna Christiansen (D-Virgin Islands), Eni Faleomavaega (D–American Samoa), Madeleine Bordallo (D–Guam) and Gregorio C. Sablan (D-Northern Marianas) and Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico) of the partial vote granted them in 1993 when Democrats ruled the chamber.

All of them represent minority populations. All of them are minorities and three of the six are women! This is not Democracy this is hypocrisy.

“D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray added that the decision to rescind voting rights was “the most outrageous insult imaginable.” Shortly after the GOP’s vote, Delegate Norton said she told attendees at the rally not to go quietly into the night now that attacks on their rights had already begun.

Ilir Zherka, executive director of DC Vote, described the GOP’s action as shameful “It’s about political power and they are determined to deny political power, it seems, to D.C. residents,” Zherka called the GOP’s action ironic, House Speaker John Boehner and his peers profess to support the Constitution. “Federal courts have held that the vote is constitutional,” said Zherka.

Since the beginning of the American Republic, people had died for the right to vote. Now to see the Republicans begin to dismantle that right is the punch in the stomach, the blow to the head that I always thought was coming.

Did the inflamed racist subliminal sentiment allow them to deny of the elected delegates the right to vote, which denies their people representation in Congress? What is more outrageous is that none of the mainstream media or the Human Rights Leaders have called attention to this despicable racial injustice.

Are we asleep? Have we been lulled into “the dream”? If this is not a wakeup call, what is?

The story of the Civil Rights Movement and the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday must be told today, tomorrow and everyday and in every generation if we are to keep the gains from being lost in “I have a dream”.

John Donne wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through this great revolution.

Marsha Joyner is a longtime civil rights activist and former president of The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition-Hawaii.

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• Victor Geminiani: Our Aspirations for Economic Justice
• Michael Golojuch, Jr.: King’s Dream Includes the LGBT Community
• Clare Hanusz: Channeling Dr. King