The Rev. Dr. Marvin McMickle is Senior Pastor to 1,500 parishioners at the historic Antioch Baptist Church here in Cleveland. As a delegate committed to voting for Barack Obama, he is on his way to the convention in Denver. But first, he has a compelling family story to tell.
In an emotional coincidence(?) of history, Barack Obama will become the first black American to accept our party’s nomination for President 45 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
In yet another emotional coincidence(?) of history, the day that Americans have their first opportunity to vote for a black presidential candidate, November 4, will be 78 years to the day after Rev. McMickle’s story takes place. The link is to an article and video relating the story. Below is my transcript of the video, in which Rev. McMickle tells the story in his own words:
While the person in the church was doing a genealogical study of my family tree, she ran across a person who had married into our family in Danville, Kentucky, named Ed Doneghy. He was born in 1870 in Kentucky. And in 1930 – so if you do the math, at the age of 60 – he went for the first time to register and vote.
He went to the county seat where the registration process took place, told the person who was there, the registrar, that he wanted to vote, and he was told that "blacks cannot vote here." He refused to leave. The Democratic challenger shot him on the spot at the polls four times. Cause of death on the death certificate was homicide – pistol shots.
In my parents’ lifetime, if not in my own, black people were still being murdered for daring to try to vote – never mind running for an office; that’s out of the question. He was killed for trying to register to vote – at the age of 60.
I think we all know how far we’ve come. In our minds, in our innermost spirit we realize what having a legitimate candidate like Obama means. But we don’t all have a biographical footnote that says: And on the way to Denver, there was a day in Danville.
When a person in your own family tree was shot to death for daring to register to vote . . . He didn’t vote. He wasn’t running for office. He was 60 years old. He had never before been allowed to vote. What got into him to show up that day, I don’t know, but there he went. And, so I really appreciate how far the country has come and all the more determined to pursue this course because of how much other generations paid to get us here.
Rev. McMickle is 60 years old himself this year as he gets the opportunity to step into the booth and vote for Obama 78 years to the day after his great uncle was shot for trying to do the same thing.
Here is a jarring account (25 pg. pdf; go to p. 19) of the killing written at the time it happened:
DISPUTE AT POLLS FATAL
DANVILLE, Ky., Nov. 4 – An election quarrel at Turkey Pen precinct, resulted in the fatal shooting of Ed Doneghy, colored, by Joe Hayden, a white Demoratic election challenger. Doneghy was killed when he visited the precinct to "straighten out" a trival [sic] disagreement as to colord [sic] voting at the booth.
Hayden was arrested by James Bean, sheriff, made bond a few minutes later returned to resume his work. He said he shot in self defense.
The colored man, witnesses said, directed his attack at Hayden, the row became heated and Doneghy reached for his pocket. Hayden fired four bullets into Doneghy’s body and as he fell, witnesses said, his hand clasped a pistol.
A ‘trivial disagreement.’ Says a lot about perspective, doesn’t it?