Under the baobab: 2024 is a transitional year, similar to a time 60 years ago

President Biden in his kickoff speech for the 2024 campaign, asked “Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” Democracy is on the ballot this year, and not just in America. This year more than half of the world’s people will participate in their own national elections. This year will mark a major transition in our history. It reminds us of another time 60 years ago.

1964 was a national election year. One candidate was a progressive Democrat, the other a conservative Republican. The country was struggling to eliminate the centuries-old practice of racial segregation and discrimination. President Lyndon Johnson had recently signed the Civil Rights Act. Inspired by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, a thousand Black and white civil rights workers went to Mississippi to register African Americans to vote — less than 3% had been allowed to. During the course of the struggle, Rev. MLK Jr. was arrested 29 times. He was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 while supporting the sanitation workers’ strike.

The movement for freedom and racial equality was ushered in by assassinations, police dogs, weaponized fire hoses, massive arrests and murders. In Birmingham, white supremacists had killed four little girls by bombing their Sunday School class. Medgar Evers, the leader of Mississippi’s NAACP, was gunned down in his front yard by people who believed that they had a right to kill anyone in order to maintain their inhumane system of inequality. Our Mississippi freedom and voting rights struggle were met with similar violence.

The first day most of us arrived in Mississippi, the KKK — with the complicity of the local police — kidnapped and lynched three civil rights workers: Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner and James Chaney. Two were Jewish brothers from New York, James was a local African American. In the search for their remains, several other bodies of klan victims were discovered. Despite these and other atrocities, nearly all of us stayed in Mississippi to test the new civil rights bill and to form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

Later that summer, led by Bob Moses and Dr. Aaron Henry, we went to the Democratic Party’s National Convention held in Atlantic City. The regular Mississippi delegation had failed to allow the participation of any African Americans. We petitioned to have MFDP recognized as the legitimate representatives. Fannie Lou Hamer spoke eloquently to the credentials committee, saying she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” and, “no one can be free until everyone’s free.” Our petition failed but the movement to end racial discrimination did not.

Sixty years later we have arrived at another transitional moment in history. This time the struggle is not for racial equality but for democracy and the democratic principles upon which our free society is built. I believe the struggle will be no less fierce. If democracy is to triumph, the collective voice of “we the people” must be trumpeted in every hamlet, town and city. It is not always who we have been. It is who we must be. We will have a republic, sisters and brothers, “if we can keep it.”

We have already begun with our local elections. Congratulations to all the recently elected, including members of the State College Borough Council: Evan Myers, Matt Herndon, Kevin Kassab and Josh Portney and the reelected commissioners of the Centre County: Mark Higgins, Amber Concepcion and Steve Dershem.

And congrats to the Lady Lion Basketball team for winning their first Big Ten victory over Northwestern and to head coach Carolyn Kieger on her 150th career win. The No. 1 ranked Penn State wrestling team under head coach Cael Sanderson continued its winning ways with a victory over Oregon State. They open their Big Ten schedule on Jan. 14 against Indiana.

Charles Dumas is a lifetime political activist, a professor emeritus from Penn State, and was the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. Congress in 2012. He was the 2022 Lion’s Paw Awardee and Living Legend honoree of the National Black Theatre Festival. He lives with his partner and wife of 50 years in State College.