Voter-registration events planned

Staff report

Youngstown

Sojourn to the Past students from Youngstown city schools will join with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority to conduct voter education and registrations at the three city high schools.

Registrations will be at Chaney High at 9 a.m. today, 11 a.m. today at Youngstown Early College, and 9 a.m. Tuesday at East High School.

The presentation will emphasize the importance of students exercising their right to vote.

Sojourn to the Past is a 10-day journey to the civil-rights sites in the South for high school students. Youngstown students not only visit the sites, but they also meet people actually involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

For the past four years, the students have developed an action plan to focus on voter registration in their high schools because, during the struggle for civil rights, many black people died just trying to register to vote.

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority was founded in 1913 on Howard University campus in Washington, D.C., as a public organization. One of its focuses is social action, which includes voter registration.

The sorority has grown internationally and has more than 250,000 members.

Locally, the Youngstown Alumnae chapter has conducted voter-registrations drives since its inception in 1951. The chapter also recently helped to promote the 2010 Census by providing fact sheets to the community and participating in census training.