Otis Moss, Sr. and the Privilege of Voting

During one of her shows, Oprah Winfrey told one of the sweetest stories about a pastor she knows named Otis Moss, Jr. His father, Otis Moss, Sr. was a poor sharecropper. 

When Otis Moss, Sr. learned that black men had won the right to vote, he was thrilled. When voting day rolled around that year, Mr. Moss, elderly by then, got up in the morning, put on his best suit, and walked the 6 miles to the polling place. 

As he got to what he had been told was the proper voting place, they told him he had to go to another polling place. It was another 6 miles down the road. He walked that distance, only to be told again he had to vote at another location. 
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He set out for that polling place, and when he arrived, he found the door closed. Mr. Moss was too late to vote. He walked 19 miles by the time he returned home and was grievously disappointed that he had not been able to vote. When election day came around the next year, Otis Moss Sr. had died.

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Artist Alfred Rudolph Waud depicted "The First Vote" of African Americans in Virginia in November 16, 1867, issue of Harper's Weekly magazine.

Whenever I think of this true story, I tear up, and it takes me a while before I can get the image of this dear, conscientious man walking the 19 miles that day to vote. To him, and so many of our wonderful citizens who waited so long for the privilege, making every effort to cast their vote was an honor many thought they would never see. 

I wonder how many of us really feel that level of honor and privilege when we vote. Many, I hope. For it is a privilege, as nobody knows better than one who has waited so long to exercise their hard-fought right, when they should, indeed, have never been denied in the first place.
​Bless them, bless them. There Mr. Moss was, dressed in his Sunday best suit, who walked 19 miles to vote. He was not alone.

Oprah Winfrey tells the story here: 

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