Urban Legends

The Legend

Found on the Internet in October 1997

In 1965, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson finally got around to signing the Voters Rights Act which had been sitting on Presidents' desks since the end of the Civil War. This law gave black people the right to vote that they had been denied during more than a century of slavery and disenfranchisement. The law had an expiration limit of twenty years.

President Ronald Regan signed a law in 1982 that extended the law's expiration until twenty five years later. Those twenty five years are almost up, so in 2007, black people across the country will lose the right to vote. Is it any coincidence that this expiration will coincide exactly with the expiration of the constitutional amendments that abolished slavery? Or that it expires the same day that the south regains the option to succeed from the United States? I think not!

You must act now to stop this horrible injustice! The rights of black Americans to vote must be preserved! Call, write, or e-mail your Congressperson, alderperson, senator, mayor, judges, clerks, city council members, inspectors, chief of police, school principal, federal building janitor, and/or other government worker to lodge your strong protest! Make sure that your priest, rabbi, minister, cleric, higher power, Scientology Focus Agent, or whatever it is that atheists have knows that action needs to be taken! Cancel the limit on the right of black people to vote. Don't let it expire like milk!

(Incidentally, women lose the right to vote in 2007 also. If this is important to you, you can mention it to your Congressman as well.)