Happy Birthday to Dr. Ferguson Reid! He turns 91 today. I have no idea what he did to celebrate but I know that last year when he turned 90 he said he would rather register voters than have a party.
His friends started the voter registration advocacy movement 90for90 in honor of him. And boy, have they. The original goal of 90for90 was to register 90 new voters in each precinct. 250,000. “A quarter of a million for the Old Dominion.”
They beat that already. Good thing too, because probably for his 91st birthday he would ask for one more from each district. I can see him at 110 telling people to get that cane away from him and go out and register voters.
The 90for90 movement has already grown to include most of the Democratic State Party Chairs, All of the Democratic Presidential Candidates, tons of Congressional Candidates, Grammy Winners, Emmy Winners and I think an Oscar Winner.
It’s become a nationwide movement but it started in Virginia. I sometimes wonder about Virginia. I wonder what they do to celebrate this hometown hero of theirs? Do they have streets named after him? Parks?
When I was a kid I lived in MI and everyone talked about how Stevie Wonder had gone to school there at the Michigan School for the Blind. You can better believe that both Georgia and Alabama honor MLK. Alabama and TN honor John Lewis. Louisiana honors Andrew Young.
Wanna know why we can't get rid of the penny? Even though it makes no financial sense to have this coin? Lincoln. No way are the people of Illinois going to let the world forget about him. You gotta love them for that.
I doubt Dr. Reid cares about that at all. He doesn’t seem to need or seek recognition, he just does what he does. What he does most of the time is “drop down and go around”. That’s how he got things done when he was registering voters during the days of poll taxes and literacy tests and that how he got things done when he was the first black man elected to the VA legislature since Reconstruction.
I'm not sure he wants accolades or monuments but I am sure he deserves them. I was trying to do the math in my head today for when he asks of all to register 110 voters in every precinct in the US. I think that’s pretty close to 20 million new voters. A formidable force indeed. Happy Birthday Dr. Reid.
You can show him a little love by going to the 90for90 Facebook page and clicking “like”.