Alabama Congressional candidate speaks about reviving Democratic Party in South

by Jessica Howard
Artur Davis, Democratic candidate for Alabama’s 7th Congressional District, one of the nation’s poorest, recalled past struggles in the South and the need to recapture some of the political morality espoused by the late Robert F. Kennedy during a talk yesterday afternoon in Wilson Hall.

Davis, a Birmingham attorney, spoke to an audience of about 100 students and faculty including Tennessee 5th District Democratic candidate for Congress and adjunct professor at the Owen School of Management Jim Cooper and Jonathan Farley, Green Party candidate for Congress and assistant professor of mathematics. Also attending was Thomas Schwartz, under whom Davis worked as a research assistant while a student at Harvard University.

In his address titled, “Reviving the Democratic Party in the South: A Progressive Strategy,” Davis told the crowd of a visit to Vanderbilt by Robert F. Kennedy March 17, 1968, the day before he announced his presidential candidacy. Kennedy’s visit came at a time when the South was in a state of turmoil as the Vietnam war waged on, and earlier that same year the Voter’s Rights Act was passed, allowing African Americans to vote.

“When he came to this campus in 1968, we were living in a time of social unrest,” he said.

Davis said that Kennedy talked at Vanderbilt about his dream of a country that “had its priorities straight.”

“I mention his speech, for the last 34 years in this country we have been missing something in politics,” he said. “I think something died that June day in 1968 when Robert Kennedy went to the podium to claim victory in the California primary and left the podium to pass by an assassin’s bullet.”

Davis said what died then is a “sense that politics and morality are intertwined,” and that Kennedy understood that morality was a combination of passion and compassion about the impoverished members of society who have for the most part been forgotten.

Davis was born and raised in a region of Alabama called the “black belt” by many because of its high African American population and its role as the home of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Forty percent of children there live below the poverty line, and only one of three children has health insurance.

“We have to decide what we are going to do about those children,” said Davis, who worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center after graduating from Harvard Law School. “I think that we still have an obligation in this country for all those people and all those children left behind,” he said.

Davis said for the Democratic Party to become a national majority, it must recognize that elections are centered around values, stop fighting about “the little things” and preach and speak of compassion in our society.

“It has to be the party that Robert Kennedy was trying to build in 1968,” he said.

Following his talk, he opened the floor for questions from the audience.

“… When a child turns 18, they ought to call you down to the [high school] guidance office and register you to vote,” he said when asked of how to increase voter turnout. “If we engage people on their own terms, you’d be surprised how receptive they are.”

When asked about affirmative action, Davis said, “We ought to have a workforce that looks like Americans — not as a matter of a philosophy, but I think it makes a better and more productive workforce.”

Davis, who faces no Republican opponent, is heavily favored to win the congressional seat in November.

Posted 10/17/02 at 11:00 a.m.