John Wilkes, Adam Clayton Powell, and Julian Bond were elected, excluded and returned to the legislature.
Wilkes had incurred the King’s wrath with his advocacy of free elections, freedom from arbitrary seizure and arrest, and freedom of the press. “His constituents promptly reelected him only to see Wilkes expelled two more times in short order,” Sevilla said. “Finally, the King’s men decided after Wilkes was overwhelmingly reelected yet again, that no vote for Wilkes could be counted. And so, he was expelled yet again. But Wilkes had the last laugh.
Powell was the first African American elected to Congress from New York and was reelected for nearly three decades. He became a powerful national politician from the Democratic Party and a prominent spokesperson for civil rights. In 1967, citing allegations that Powell had misappropriated public funds and abused the process of the New York courts, the House of Representatives denied Powell his congressional seat.
Julian Bond, a Black man, was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965. But because of his statements criticizing the U.S. war in Vietnam and the Selective Service laws, the Georgia House decided in 1966 that Bond could not be seated as a member of the House. Bond met all of the Georgia Constitution’s requirements for membership in the Georgia Legislature, including age, citizenship and county residency.
“We believe the repeated and preventable slaughter of our children should frustrate and disrupt decorum because this horrifying pattern must never be accepted as business as usual,” the senators wrote. “Moreover, we do not believe that breaking decorum is alone sufficient cause for employing the most draconian of consequences to duly-elected lawmakers.”
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