The Next Fight For Civil Rights Lies In Ending The Federal CityBY: CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD
JANUARY 19, 2022
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Martin Luther King Jr. was 20 years old — a young man, already halfway through his short life — by the first summer the nation’s capital desegregated city swimming pools. Historic photographs from the years before show black children crowding outside the fences in D.C.’s terrible summer heat, while white children splashed in the cool water.
Four years later, while the 24-year-old King was studying philosophy at Harvard University, the Supreme Court forced DC to enforce its 70-year-old anti-segregation laws, finally ending white-only bars and restaurants in the District of Columbia.
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On Saturday, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser instituted a vaccine mandate, barring nearly 60 percent of the city’s black residents from bars, gyms, concerts, theaters, nightclubs, restaurants, and indoor swimming pools. That very day, Jan. 15, 2022, King would have turned 93.
This city is sliding backward in nearly every measurable way. We see it in schools, where children are masked, tested, forced to accept vaccinations not yet approved for kids, and taught racism and segregation.
We see it in our streets, where violent crime has skyrocketed, breaking murder records not seen in nearly two decades — and hitting the poor the hardest.
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Washington, D.C. was built to be a federal city — welcoming to all, and unmolested by political rivalries or jealousies. It no longer is; the city’s government has seen to that. But Congress has the power to change this, and the solution could lie in a nearly 200-year-old political enfranchisement effort that the mayor just might have revived.
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Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/19/the-next-fight-for-civil-rights-lies-in-ending-the-federal-city/
