Comments from "Let's Talk Politics with Adrienne Washington," during Lyndia Grant's "Think on These Things" talk show on WYCB-1340, www.MySpiritdc.com, 11/30/12, 6 p.m.
Putting politics slightly aside today, I wanted to give tribute to my dear friend Lawrence Guyot, an unsung foot soldier and hero in the civil rights movement who dedicated his entire life to fighting for voting rights in the nation and in the nation's capital beginning as a Freedom Fighter. To him we owe an enormous debt. But if I know Guyot, and I did, he wouldn't cotton to anyone mourning his death last week after a long illness, or trying to canonize him like a saint. Instead he would demand that you get involved in a community project to help someone to honor his legacy of community organizing. It was Guyot, who after all, is credited with registering legions of Mississippi voters, including civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer ("I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."). And he was beaten within an inch of his life doing so in his home state of Mississippi which he often noted administered the most vicious brand of segregation tactics and race relations. "There's America, there's the South and then there's Mississippi," he often quoted when recalling the Freedom Riders, or his dangerous days as the leader of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party which challenged the national DNC to unseat the state's all-white delegation and forever changed the face of the now inclusive party that would eventually go on to win the presidency in 2008 with the nation's first African American, Barack Obama. An early and ardent Obama supporter, Guyot smugly predicted both presidential victories despite polling data.
Some chided that Guyot, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was "stuck in the 60s," but I knew better. He used those race war stories as a sucker strategy, a springboard to get folks motivated to protest and petition against the injustices of the current times. Think voter suppression efforts of the 2004 and 2012 campaigns. Think the U.S. Supreme Court about to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act, calling it "outdated." Think again about the Supreme Court revisiting the affirmative action cases. Mr. Guyot, who could be seen passing out leaflets and petitions when he was still able, believed in the value of grassroots organizing if he believed nothing else. And he would say, especially to young students as those he unmercifully prodded in my own classes, to not only vote, but also to get involved and participate in the political process. He would be out there supporting President Obama and drumming up grassroots support to get folks to follow the president's directive to call, email, tweet and take to the streets to let Congress know that they want a balanced approach to fix the so-called "fiscal cliff." He loved nothing more than getting in the lion's den and sparring with conservative Fox News hosts like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. He would remind them that they actually lost the election, in no uncertain terms. Guyot was not one to mince words.
No doubt Guyot would also become a leader in of the movement, albeit probably not online with the "hands-off-ambassador-susan-rice" web protest, to support U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice against the hypocritical and preemptive attacks of Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsay Graham who are already blocking her prospects of becoming the next Secretary of State even before she has been nominated.
Like a born and bred Southern from Pass Cristian, Miss., Guyot would surely stop and tip his hat to his own cortege, but he would quickly move on to the cause du jour for the "least, the lost and the left out."
Whenever I dared to hint of being weary of "The Struggle" during our daily discussions (ah, sometimes knock-down-drag-out-dog-and-cat fights when he'd literally try to order me about what write and how to write about a particular prickly issue in my former newspaper column, he wouldn't hear of it. "Woman! Us can't get tired until us gets free," Guyot admonished, "and we ain't free yet; so get busy!" Honor his life, but head his words.
