Grab-N-Go History

In dealing with some of the steeper hills, I like to come prepared with a walking stick.
I was asked several times where I got it. To the anticlimactic reaction when I tell them that I got it at a truck stop just outside of Pittsburgh.

One hundred years ago, on June 2, 1924, the United States government conferred citizenship on Native American people by passing the Snyder Act, also known as the Indian Citizenship Act. Prior to that time, Native Americans had been explicitly denied citizenship—first in the United States Constitution and, later, through the 14th Amendment. However, while the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 ensured that all Native Americans born within the United States had citizenship, the Act failed to fulfill the promise of citizenship because Native Americans were not also granted voting rights. It would be decades before all 50 states granted Native American citizens the right to vote. And even today, due to the inequities that Native Americans endure when accessing registration, early voting, and Election Day polling places, the promise of full citizenship remains broken.

While the 15th Amendment declared that the right to vote could not be denied on account of race, many states were able to find other ways to deny Native American people the vote—residence on a reservation, tribal enrollment status, taxation, and incompetency were all used by states as reasons to disenfranchise Native people. One tragic outcome was that thousands of Native American veterans— including American Indian Code Talkers returning from World War II— found themselves prohibited from participating in basic civil liberties in the nation that they had risked their lives to protect.

Taken from narf.org

This was one of the main reasons I chose to not teach professionally. I would have refused to mold history to fit within the narrow mold of political correctness.