STAND AND DELIVER

MLK’s Family Join March to Demand Action on Voting Rights in D.C.

Martin Luther King III, his wife Arndrea Waters King, and their teenage daughter, Yolanda Renee King, led the march across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in D.C.

Members of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s family led a march in Washington, D.C. on Monday to demand the Senate pass expanded federal voting rights legislation. Martin Luther King III, his wife Arndrea Waters King, and their teenage daughter, Yolanda Renee King, joined hundreds of marchers as they walked across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. In a statement last week, King III, the revered reverend’s eldest son, said that the “stakes could not be higher to protect and expand” his father’s legacy. Organizers, who planned the route to link up with the annual two-mile Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Walk, called on lawmakers to do away with the filibuster. “From the Civil War to the Jim Crow era, the filibuster has blocked popular bills to stop lynching, end poll taxes, and fight workplace discrimination,” activists wrote on the march’s website. “Now it’s being used to block voting rights. The weaponization of the filibuster is racism cloaked in procedure and it must go.” Voting rights marchers were scheduled to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House members, ahead of the Senate’s plan to take up voting rights legislation on Tuesday.