DNC Delegate Profile: Ralph Edwards

Democratic National Convention delegate Ralph Edwards believes the nation is at a crossroads.

One way leads to inequality and another to equality.

He sees the Supreme Court's 2010 split decision rejecting limits to corporate spending on political campaigns as steps along a path to inequality.

He sees the Obama Administration's support for one person one vote and for limits to corporate spending as steps along the road to equality.

Ralph has committed to campaign, door-to-door, on behalf of equality.

He is excited to be part of the Massachusetts delegation, not just for the joy of nominating Barack Obama, but for the skills he will build to help him work for the president's re-election.

The convention will include campaign training — how talk to people about the president and his accomplishments. Ralph believes the president stabilized an economy that was spiraling out of control before the last presidential election.

Already, before the delegate left for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, he campaigned door-to-door for the president in New Hampshire, a state that could go either red or blue in the coming election.

And when he returns from the convention he will continue to work on the ground for the president.

Obama is only the second presidential candidate for whom Ralph has campaigned. The other campaign he worked on was Dick Gregory's in 1968, a candidate for the Freedom and Peace Party.

Ralph has not always been politically active but as a black person born in Louisiana he was from the beginning shaped by politics, those of the Deep South.

Black people in the region were subject to Jim Crow laws intended to suppress their voting.

Literacy tests, poll taxes and unreasonable voter registration hours threw up barriers to voting by blacks and, in some places, poor whites.

His experience with inequality and his desire to work for equality has inspired his political involvement with the president's campaign.

And his travels to the Democratic National Convention are steps toward helping the president cross the finish line in November with a victory at the polls.

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