The United States has celebrated the 236th anniversary of their nation’s independence.
U.S. citizens in Rwanda and their Rwandan friends including the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo this evening gathered at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali for this anniversary.
Below is an extensive speech delivered by U.S. Ambassador Donald W. Koran themed; Independence Day 2012: Celebrating Our Electoral Journey July 3, 2012.
This evening we celebrate not only our own independence, but we join our Rwandan hosts in commemorating their independence and liberation.
We congratulate the Rwandan people for the remarkable successes they have had on their journey since Rwanda’s liberation.
We Americans have been on our own journey since independence as well, one which we would like to share with you tonight. As you know, later this year Americans go to the polls to vote for a president.
In 2012, voting is a right that Americans over the age of 18 are privileged to enjoy. It wasn’t always this way.
You’ve no doubt by now had the chance to look around at some of the displays we’ve arranged for you tonight, and seen how they chronicle our electoral journey to the universal suffrage we now enjoy. I’d like you to indulge me as I share with you a bit of that journey.
At the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1787 voting was largely restricted to white, male property owners. As you can imagine, this was not a large segment of the population at the time.
The idea of universal voting rights was still a foreign concept even to our founding fathers, who are portrayed at our first table, yet they planted and nurtured the seed of the idea that citizens could and should be responsible for selecting their own government. As the definition of citizenship grew over the years, so did the expansion of voting rights.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, voting laws were expanded to include non-property owners, until by 1850, almost all white males could vote. This was progress, yes, and yet more than half of the U.S. population was still excluded from voting.
The next group to receive the vote were freed slave men, with the passage of the 15th Amendment to our Constitution in 1870.
There was tremendous opposition to this amendment, particularly from the former slaveholding states, and as the right to vote is governed at the state level, many raised barriers to continue to exclude black Americans.
This was unfortunately to remain the norm in many parts of the United States for the next 90 years.
Women, for their part, were never considered potential voters in the nineteenth century. They had to fight for their right. You’ll see at our second table some of the highlights of the women’s suffrage movement.
Begun as early as the late 1840s by brave women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, it took nearly 70 years of women’s activism before the 19th amendment was signed into law in 1920, giving the vote to women.
Four years later, Native Americans were also enfranchised and given citizenship, including the right to vote.
The final table you see documents the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s. Though legally black Americans had been given the vote in 1870, for 90-some years they had often been prevented from voting in one way or another.
Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965 mounted a major voter registration drive to draw attention to African-American voting rights, leading ultimately to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which protected the voting rights of minorities and outlawed literacy tests as a prerequisite for voting.
Since then, we’ve made other changes to voting rights – lowering the voting age to 18, making it easier to register, all with the idea of making the right to vote more accessible to ensure that our government is truly representative of who we are as a nation.
That’s not to say that all has been smooth in our electoral process since then. We all remember the presidential election of 2000.
For more than a month the world watched as we debated the vote count in the state of Florida, and ultimately called upon the Supreme Court to play its role as neutral arbiter of the contested election.
It wasn’t pretty, and many Americans were disappointed by the ugliness of the discourse. But in the end, our institutions proved stronger than partisan bickering, and a president was duly installed in the White House.
We drew from it the lesson that it was ok to disagree, and to debate, and even to rage at each other, but in the end, the systems our forefathers created, and that we have endeavored to improve over the years since our independence, have proven unshakable.
As Americans go to the polls again later this year to elect a president, we know that while our system is not perfect, it is self-correcting. Our long electoral journey has shown us that we can overcome the errors of the past, and for this, we celebrate.
From the original idea that government “by the people, for the people” was indeed possible, we have developed into a nation confident that the institutions built to enshrine that principle will endure.
We know that Rwandans share these same ideals that we hold so dear, and with this in common, we are able to come together to do great things.
Our presence here in Rwanda is a reflection of the very real value we place on our relationship, and of our mutual desire to collaborate on Rwanda’s continued progress away from the scars of its past into a bright future.
I see this bright future every day in the faces of young Rwandans who I meet and talk to. I am confident that as we move forward in step with each other, we will continue to see the same progress as we have seen in the past.
As we join together to celebrate our nation and its people, we are truly honored by the presence tonight of so many friends. We thank you all for your company, and thank the Government of Rwanda for its close cooperation with us over the years.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at the Embassy, who worked so hard to make this event a success.
I would like to raise a toast to us all – to our Rwandan hosts, to our Embassy staff, to President Kagame, and to the people of Rwanda and the United States.
I toast our cooperation and our continued mutual respect as we work together for the benefit of the American and Rwandan people. If you would all raise your glasses and join me.
I thank you all.
