Tylik McMillan, a recent graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, remembers walking miles to vote on his gerrymandered campus, one split between two congressional districts.
“We’ve been seeing tactics like that to make it harder for students to vote in some places,” said McMillan, who is currently the national director of the Youth and College Division of the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded in 1991 by the Reverend Al Sharpton.
On Saturday, August 28th, tens of thousands of activists are expected to gather in major cities across the nation to protest the latest sweep of voter suppression laws. College students, in particular, will be among those who will gather on that day, which marks the 58th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech."
Martin Luther King III and Reverend Al Sharpton
Organized by Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, the son of the slain civil rights leader, March On For Voting Rights comes as Congress debates key voting legislation that also impacts some college campuses.
“For students, the question is whether they can vote on campus or go home to vote,” said Sharpton, the well-known civil rights activist and host of PoliticsNation on MSNBC. “There can be problems if you live on a campus far from home. Voter ID laws are the second problem.”
In states like Texas and Tennessee, for example, student IDs cannot be used when individuals register to vote. Yet a gun license is accepted. “That’s almost unthinkable if it wasn’t real,” said Sharpton in an interview with Diverse.
