Transforming Alabama – and young voters. Nothing is off the table

Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the franchise to all Americans, Alabama has often been at the center of voting debates. This year is no exception. New maps ordered by and approved by the courts after a contentious yearslong battle could give the state’s Black voters a greater voice, and affect the balance of power in Congress after the 2024 elections. But it all depends on turnout.

Formerly a candidate, Dr. Adia Winfrey is now focused on voter mobilization and education through her organization, Transform Alabama, and sometimes uses some of the hip-hop strategies that energized her campaign. Student ambassador Maurice Gray is a believer, and has joined the cause to urge young people to care — and to vote. Both join this episode of Equal Time.

Can Bernie Sanders change his luck in the South?

OPINION — Bernie Sanders spent the weekend on a Southern swing, which makes sense. The Vermont senator’s failure to connect with enough core Democratic voters the last time around — in the South, that means black voters, and black women in particular — stalled his campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. He hit a wall in the early primary state of South Carolina, losing badly to Hillary Clinton, and he never recovered.

Opinion: America’s Future Depends on Clearly Seeing Its Past

It may be a museum that makes viewers want to look away, with its solemn memorial to the thousands of men, women and children murdered — lynched — in countless acts of domestic terrorism. But facing truth must come before reconciliation, before Americans can clearly see where the tribalism that continues to threaten unity can eventually and inevitably lead.

Opinion: The Commandments According to Roy Moore Take a Hit

In the Alabama Senate race, both sides went to church — Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones took their appeals to their faithful, which, for the most part, worship the same God but came to wildly different electoral conclusions.

On Tuesday, Jones won. The miracle of a Democrat winning a statewide race in deep-red Alabama actually happened. It was not the divine intervention Moore had prayed for, perhaps pointing out the danger when you so shamelessly use the word of the Lord to divide.

Doug Jones Defeats Roy Moore in Alabama

CHARLOTTE, NC — In deep-red Alabama, Democrat Doug Jones pulled off an upset win over Republican Roy Moore to fill a U.S. Senate seat. With the national and international spotlight on the state, Alabama voted to break with its recent tradition – and go against the candidate heartily endorsed by President Trump in a state he handily won. (Mary C. Curtis)

Political Contributor, Mary C. Curtis weighs in on what happened and what this means.

Opinion: Remembering Recy Taylor and the Too Familiar State of Alabama

In “The Rape of Recy Taylor,” a recently released documentary, you see the face of bravery. It is Recy Taylor, the 24-year-old African-American — a wife and mother of an infant daughter — kidnapped in 1944 by a carful of young white men, some the sons of the “respectable” leaders of Abbeville, Alabama, where they all lived. A gun held to her head, she was blindfolded, driven to a remote spot and violated in unimaginable ways. She escaped being killed by promising to keep quiet.

But she did not keep that promise.

Taylor’s legacy can be seen in the women speaking up now about sexual harassment of all kinds, most recently Alabama women who on the surface have little in common with a poor black sharecropper from decades ago. In fact, Beverly Young Nelson, who became the fifth woman to accuse Roy Moore when she tearfully recounted her story of an alleged sexual assault, said she and her husband voted for Donald Trump, while Taylor, in her midcentury time, was not allowed to vote at all.