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<h1 align="center"><font size="3">Something Happened to Us Yesterday,
Something We Can�t Speak of Right Away</font></h1>
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<p align="center"><font face="Arial" size="2">by<br>
Nicholas E. Hollis</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">Thirty years ago this week,
amidst the Independence Day preparations and summer heat, Washington was
jolted by a political tremor many pundits thought would rumble into a
major earthquake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It wasn�t
Daniel Ellsberg�s confession on leaking the Pentagon Papers or Muhammed
Ali�s Supreme Court victory over the draft � although those events
snared the headlines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Rather
it was the approval of the constitutional amendment to lower the voting
age from 21 to 18.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Ohio
became the 38<sup>th</sup> state to ratify just before its legislature
adjourned on June 30 � only three months and one week after the
amendment cleared Congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>President
Richard Nixon held a ceremonial signing on July 6 with some youth group
representatives and U.S. Senator Jennings Randolph (D-WV), the
acknowledged �Father of the 26<sup>th</sup> Amendment,� smiling in the
background.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">The uphill struggle for youth
suffrage had actually begun much earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Randolph, as a junior congressman during President Franklin
Roosevelt�s first 100 days in 1933, toured Capitol Hill guided by
Representative Ruth Bryan Owen (D-Florida), daughter of his namesake,
William Jennings Bryan -- perennial, three-time Democratic presidential
candidate around the turn of the twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>�The Great Commoner� had been a tireless campaigner for
international peacekeeping, farmers and workers rights and women�s
suffrage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Randolph picked up
the banner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>At age twelve,
Randolph had watched his hero, then secretary of state in Wilson�s first
administration, battle to keep the United States out of the growing
European war. After Bryan�s principled resignation in 1915, following
the sinking of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">Lusitania</i>, the country gradually slipped away from neutrality and
into the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Randolph
watched doughboys lining up at the train station in Salem, West Virginia
heading for the fields of France. As a young reporter, Randolph saw
Wilson�s dream of American participation in the League of Nations --
aimed at international peacekeeping along lines advocated by Bryan --
collapse.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">By 1942, Randolph, a five-term
representative, was recognized as a leader for aviation (he had opposed
the battleship lobby in favor of aircraft carriers long before Pearl
Harbor) and peacekeeping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">de facto</i> mayor of
Washington, Randolph was chairman of the House Committee on the District
of Columbia, the gentleman from the hills began his crusade for the youth
vote.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>Randolph had cast the decisive vote approving Roosevelt�s
war preparations draft (1940), and now he wanted those young people
provided with voting rights as the country was asking them to possibly
make the supreme sacrifice on the alter of freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>But young people were considered anti-war, and the measure
floundered.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">Ten more attempts and
twenty-nine years later (1971).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The
perseverance of the senior US Senator from West Virginia paid off. The
nation had barely stomached Korea and was thoroughly sickened and
shattered by the ongoing Vietnam War. Nixon�s �plan� for ending the
conflict seemed like a charade, spiraling the country to new lows of
apathy and disillusionment.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">For Nixon, who was to face the
voters in 1972, the 26<sup>th</sup> amendment must have added to his
insomnia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The �newly
eligible� voters had watched their older brothers and sisters,
�Children of the Sixties,� pummeled and bent out of shape by societal
pliers administered by an older generation which seemed somehow
responsible for prolonging, if not actively abetting the Vietnam conflict,
high-profile political assassinations, and resistance to the civil rights
crusade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>For those interested
in history, it seemed the �Greatest Generation,� after surviving the
Depression and winning the war, had ingested too many lessons watching
totalitarian leaders of the 1930s determined at hold power at all costs.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">But the youth voting bloc
envisioned by some political observers did not materialize. As Nixon
welcomed the young voters, he was also about to showcase Watergate for the
Nation with all its attendant �dirty tricks� � which have only grown
more tolerated as the coarsening of political dialogue accelerated into a
�realpolitik steamroller of negativity� fueled by torrents of campaign
contributions, legal and otherwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Remember
that money in Nixon�s secretary�s safe?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Nixon may be gone, but the corrupter who gave him those funds never
got prosecuted, and is still actively poisoning the system.<a href="#/1">/1</a></font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">In his later years, Randolph
agonized over the growing apathy among voters, particularly youth. While
never yielding on principle, he was always unfailingly courteous and
maintained a high standard of civility and decorum for his Senate
colleagues. During his last term in the U.S. Senate, Randolph hurled
himself into the creation of an international peacekeeping effort bringing
OPEC and western nations together for balanced energy and agricultural
development resulting in the formation of the Agri-Energy Roundtable (AER)
and the U.S. Institute of Peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Randolph
chaired the AER from 1984 to 1990 and helped that nonprofit association to
achieve United Nations accreditation, while spawning a network of
indigenous counterpart associations around the world focused on food
security and farm issues. Things seem to move in full circle. Randolph had
always supported rural development and even pioneered important �back to
farm� projects with Eleanor Roosevelt in the depths of the Depression.
Near the end of his active years, in a remarkable life of achievement
which bookends the twentieth century, Randolph was closer in spirit to the
Great Commoner, his peacekeeper and suffrage crusader namesake, urging
�battalions for the ballot� among youth and renewed devotion to values
that made this Nation great. As we celebrate another July 4<sup>th</sup>
� especially in the aftermath of Election 2000, let us resolve to
�Recall Randolph� and be vigilant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Out on the edge of darkness, with their noble lives obscured by the
politics of negativity, Randolph, Bryan, and other American unheralded
giants rode on the Peace Train.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So
can we, if we but remember.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial">________________________________________________________________</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="Arial"><a name="/1">/1</a> See <i>Abuse
of Power,</i> Stanley Kutler, (1997) pp. 119-121 and<i> An American
Life, </i>Jeb Stuart Magruder, (1974) p.222</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">Nicholas
E. Hollis is director of the Jennings Randolph Recognition Project (JRRP).
<br>
Adopted from a speech delivered before the Ohio-West Virginia YMCA (June
22, 2001).</span></font></p>
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