CINCINNATI (AP) — Civil rights activists frustrated by police slayings of blacks across the nation are looking to flex their voting power to push for reforms.
The continued alarm over how police treat black men has been a major focus of the five-day NAACP national convention that was wrapping up Wednesday for thousands of participants in Cincinnati. Members of the group that dates to 1909 compared the issue to the 1960s violence against civil rights demonstrators and mob hangings of blacks in earlier eras.
Cornell William Brooks, the NAACP’s president, pledged in a fiery speech Monday to end “lynching in the 21st century … practiced not with sheets and ropes but with defiled uniforms, defiled badges and defiled oaths.”
The convention’s theme of “Our Lives Matter, Our Votes Count” underscored goals of defending black voting rights and getting out the vote in the first presidential election since black turnout helped Barack Obama twicewin the presidency. Black voters cast some 13 percent of presidential ballots in 2012, according to exit polling, and are particularly pivotal in Ohio, Florida and other swing states.
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