The Right to Vote

(poems go here)

There are many important things that happened in history.

But there are only a couple things that were important to me.

Being a woman and of biracial descent.        

The right to vote for me was clearly absent.

If I was born before 1869

The right to vote would not have been mine.

It was 1869 black men could vote.

It was in the constitution, that’s what the white man wrote.

It wasn’t until later in 1920.

When men finally started to think about me.

But of course they were not going to make this easy.

They tried to give us test to be able to vote.

They were making it so hard for us to gloat.

In 1965, they put an end to the Literacy Test.

Which finally put the question of the right to vote to rest.

This part of history is important to me

Because without these rights many laws would not have passed

And if you were not white you would be an outcast.

                                                                             -By Erica Ortega

                                                                             June 22, 2013