The actor Wendell Pierce urges people in Arkansas to register and vote on Nov. 5: NAJ screen shot

By Glynn Wilson –

WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. – The actor Wendell Pierce who played the Rev. Hosea Williams in the move “Selma,” trombone player Antoine Batiste in “Treme” and Detective Bunk Moreland in the acclaimed HBO drama series “The Wire,” broke off from traveling the country campaigning for Democrats with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on Saturday to visit barbershops and parks in Arkansas to fire people up to register and vote on Nov. 5.

As the featured guest speaker at a Rock the Delta voter registration rally in Crittenden County, not far from the west bank of the Mississippi River across from Memphis, Tennessee, Pierce braved the hot sun, said he was used to it since he is from New Orleans, and told people: “This is a very important time in our country and there are those who do not have our best interest at heart.”

“So it is incumbent upon us to exercise our right of self determination,” he said.

He’s been going to barbershops to challenge Black men to exercise their right to vote, what he called, “the bedrock of the American ideology.”

Several speakers responded to a decision by Crittenden County Circuit Judge Chris Thyer last week who ordered the county Board of Election Commissioners to hold early voting at a West Memphis church, after the board said there would be no early voting sites in that city. The board appealed the judge’s decision.

“The evil people in this town don’t want you to have a say in your own lives,” Pierce said after he was told what happened.

“That tells you how important it is, because if it wasn’t important they wouldn’t even care if you voted or not,” he said. “When evil people plot, good people plan.”

He urged people to vote based on their own self interest and values.

“That is a great, sacred honor that you should always act on,” he said. “There are those who fought battles long before we were here. We owe it to those who have gone before, who gave the ultimate sacrifice. There is blood on that ballot box.”

“Vote in your own best interest,” he said. “Vote for your children, their education, for housing, opportunity and economic development.”

When he was playing the Rev. Hosea Williams in the movie “Selma,” he said, who stood next to John Lewis as he walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were beaten on Bloody Sunday, the importance of the right to vote really hit home for him.

An Alabama state trooper swings his club at future U.S. Rep. John Lewis, pictured on the ground, during “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., in 1965: Photo by my good friend James “Spider” Martin

“As we finished shooting, the cameras went away … and I stood there alone on that bridge looking into the Alabama River,” he said. “And I realized that there were so many souls who gave the ultimate sacrifice for us to be here today.”

“Men and women who died by the barrel of a gun held by their neighbors,” he said, “saying Dear Lord I hope my life and my death will not be in vain.”

Selma the Film: Clearing Up the Controversies

So many died not just in the sands of Iwo Jima and the beaches of Normandy, he said, “but in the mud of Mississippi, the rivers of Alabama and the red clay of Georgia. Black men and women, white men and women, young and old, who gave the ultimate sacrifice so that we can go and vote.

“How dare you blaspheme their death by not even going out there and voting,” he challenged the people in Hightower Park. “That is blasphemous to me. You are doing a disservice to them, and a dishonor to them.”

“How many planes can we build to drop bombs,” he asked, “when we can build schools.”

He said he was a capitalist, while some who claim to be are not.

“They believe there is only a finite amount of wealth and they are going to get as much as they can,” he said. “Only their children will go to school. Only their communities will get opportunity.

“I believe if everyone goes to school,” he said, “the more ideas … the better the ideas … the best ideas go out into the world and there is economic growth.”

In the 20th century “political activism was the social justice movement,” he said. “In the 21st century, it’s economic development.”

He urged people to be selfish in what they want.

“Look at what your needs are and say who is going to give me my needs and meet my demands,” he said.

He called the vote, “the most powerful thing in the world,” and urged people to exercise it for their own good.

Pierce was introduced by Dr. Chris Jones, the African American candidate for Governor of Arkansas in 2022 who was defeated by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of former President Donald Trump’s first press secretaries and the daughter of former Governor Mike Huckabee.

Watch the video here:

Also speaking at the event after Pierce was Rodney Govens, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in the First District of Arkansas against MAGA Republican Rick Crawford, who didn’t even bother to show up to an Arkansas State University TV debate Thursday night in his home town of Jonesboro.

Republican Congressman Rick Crawford Was a No Show at Arkansas State Debate

That was not even mentioned by the new political reporter Josh Snyder for the establishment paper in Arkansas, the Democrat Gazette, even after I met him and told him about the important campaign for Congress in the state’s First District. And of course the online version of the paper is hidden behind a paywall, so most people won’t be able to read it.

Arkansas Democrats’ rally goes down to ‘The Wire’ with visits from actor Pierce, activist Jones

Reminds me of the establishment paper in the Pulitzer Prize winning novel All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, where Jack Burden quit writing for The Chronicle newspaper to work for the populist candidate Willie Stark, loosely based on the Louisiana Senator and Governor Huey Long.

Other speakers at the event included West Memphis Mayor Marco McClendon, Arkansas Democratic Black Caucus President Debrah Mitchell, Jessie McGruder who is running for a state House seat, and other candidates for local offices.

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