It’s MLK Day 2020. Register To Vote and Learn More About UnidosUS’s Civic Engagement Campaign ¡Adelante!
Five decades ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. successfully led a movement to overcome legal barriers preventing people of color from exercising their Constitutional right to vote. Students across the country participated in that effort. Some were beaten, some were lynched, and Dr. King himself was brutally assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, honors his legacy and all those who fought for civil rights along with him. It was through that movement that Latino civil rights leaders Ernesto Galarza, Julian Samora, and Herman Gallegos began to organize for the rights of people in their communities – the students, the farmworkers, the immigrants, the English learners, and all peoples identifying as Hispanic or Latino – into what would become the largest Latino civil rights group in the nation: UnidosUS.
Public school students and educators might consider observe the MLK Holiday by attending a civil rights rally or simply gathering friends and loved ones together to talk about what civic engagement means to them. And while you’re at it, you can register to vote and encourage those around you to do the same in just a matter of minutes.
Latinos are now the nation’s largest ethnic minority, and while 30 million Latinos are eligible to vote, only half of them are actually registered, but we’re making progress. Since 2010, we’ve registered more than 700,000 Latinos. Now, with the 2020 US presidential campaigns in full swing, UnidosUS created the Adelante Moving Us Forward voter registration campaign to empower more Latinos to exercise their right to vote. Get pumped up and learn more how to do it through our two-minute Adelante video.
