Laws requiring photo IDS to vote hurt minorities, speaker tells Black caucus

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Warren Black Caucus gave a tribute to the late steel union leader and community activist Arlette Gatewood Friday, as it heard from Clayola Brown, president of the national A. Philip Randolph Institute.

Gatewood worked 32 years at Youngstown Sheet and Tube and held leadership positions in the United Steelworkers union. He helped negotiate numerous contracts for local unions.

He was one of the founding members of the caucus and was a lifetime member of the NAACP and A. Philip Randolph Institute.

Brown, keynote speaker of the event at the McGuffey Centre, has been president of the institute since 2004 and was its first female president.

She has been a lifelong labor activist, having campaigned with her mother to organize the Manhattan Shirt Factory in her hometown of Charleston, S.C., in the 1960s.

In a conversation before her talk, she compared the historic events of 1963 through 1965, when voting rights were expanded, to the threats to voting rights today.

In many states, laws that require photo IDs at the polls have hurt minority voters because of circumstances in history that have caused many minorities to have trouble producing one, she said.

For instance, some older voters may no longer have a driver’s license.

In some Southern states, people were born at home with a midwife, meaning a birth certificate may not be available.

Read more of her remarks in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.