This is just South bashing..and it's really out of date and getting older all the time.
Perhaps you ought to check into the fact the Obama is leading in FL, NC, and VA and is tied up in Georgia.
Those are all "slave" states.
While you're dividing up the "family assets" let me let you know what you've left behind:
The French Quarter, Miami Beach, Disney World, Universal Studios, all of our beaches, half the Appalachian trail, the Great Smoky Mountain national park, Franklin Roosevelt's other home in Warm Springs Georgia, the Tuskegee Airmen, Atlanta International Airport, Johnson Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Kennedy Space Center, NASA Langley Center, ACC basketball, great colleges and universities like Georgia Tech, Emory, University of Miami, Duke, North Carolina, and Vanderbilt.
You're leaving behind: Jazz, Rock and Roll, the Blues, Country, Gospel and Bluegrass - all of the major American musical forms were products of the South.
Your leaving behind: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, the Carter Center and the King Center.
Too bad you left us: Miami's banks - the banking center of Latin America, BMW and Mercedes plants in South Carolina and Alabama, the Saturn Plant in Tennessee, the Ford plant in Georgia, aerospace giants like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman, tech companies like Siemens, and Motorola all which have substantial facilities in the South.
Lincoln, by the way viewed slavery as a NATIONAL sin, not a "Southern" sin. Read his Second Inaugural.
Nor is racism limited to the South as we've clearly seen in Ohio.
Remember that segregation was ended not by a Northerner but rather by two Southerners:
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
As Lyndon Johnson said "there is no Negro Problem...There is no Southern Problem...there is no Northern Problem..there is only an American Problem."
Shame on you for your mean spirited stereotyping,
Doug D.
Orlando, FL/Fort Lauderdale, FL
formerly of:
Augusta, GA
Atlanta, GA
Shelbyville, TN
Huntsville, AL
Sunrise, FL
Pembroke Pines, FL
Melbourne, FL
Titusville, FL
http://www.answers.com/topic/lyndon-b-johnson-voting-rights-act-addressLyndon B. Johnson: Voting Rights Act Address
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.
I urge every member of both parties—Americans of all religions and of all colors—from every section of this country—to join me in that cause.
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem.
And we are met here tonight as Americans—not as Democrats or Republicans—we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.
This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, north and south: "All men are created equal"—"Government by consent of the governed"—"Give me liberty or give me death."…
Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in man's possessions. It cannot be found in his power or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being… .
Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.
Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes… .
Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books—and I have helped to put three of them there—can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it.
In such a case our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution.
We must now act in obedience to that oath.
Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote… .