Letter: N.Y. Governor lacks party support
Saturday, February 27, 2010
From the dark days of slavery in America through Jim Crow segregation, lynching, the tumultuous civil rights years of the 1950s and 1960, and to the present, America’s history has been colored and shaped by racism. Through it all, blacks have persevered and crossed seemingly insurmountable hurdles. Indeed, the great abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglass, was right when he vociferously proclaimed, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
History has shown that black struggle in the United States often is met with white resistance, particularly from Southern whites who resent efforts to right wrongs and actualize the “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice ?EUR?” clause indelibly etched in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution.
A case in point involves New York Gov. David Paterson’s fight to keep his seat. Paterson is one of only two black sitting governors in the United States. According to the National Governor’s Association, previous black governors were P.B.S. Pinchback, who served as acting Louisiana governor for 36 days in 1872-73 while the sitting governor was being impeached; L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who became the nation’s first elected black governor in 1990; and Deval Patrick, the current governor of Massachusetts.
Letter continued --
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