The LuLac Edition #2372, March 8th, 2013

The marchers from Selma to Montgomery 50 years ago this week. (Photo: antiyale blogspot)) 

SELMA 50 YEARS AGO 

This week marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the most significant Civil Rights March in that long campaign to achieve racial equality in the South. I write about this on LuLac because as a young boy, this march was on the Nightly News every night. It was in every local and national newspaper every single day. I was made aware of this event and its importance in my formative years. Today, the anniversary is even more important now because the viability of the very Civil Rights Act that this peaceful protest brought about is in jeopardy by the U.S. Supreme Court. Apparently some members of that august body are saying the act is outdated and that there is no need anymore for racial entitlement. Racial entitlement? Are you kidding me? People got killed marching for racial equality. They were fighting for freedoms that were denied them. To quote a line from the “All In the Family” sitcom, and I directed this at Justice Scalia, “You may talk smart but you aren’t smart”. Here’s a recap of this historical event from the National Park Service website. 
The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks--and three events--that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement. On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then civil rights leaders sought court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., weighed the right of mobility against the right to march and ruled in favor of the demonstrators. "The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...," said Judge Johnson, "and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways." On Sunday, March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong. Less than five months after the last of the three marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965--the best possible redress of grievances.

District Justice candidate Attorney Mark Singer. (Photo: Freelance Associates). 

SINGER IN FOR D.J. RACE 

Mark A. Singer Announces Candidacy for District Judge 

Pittston Attorney Mark A. Singer, Esquire is announcing his candidacy for District Judge of the Magisterial District Judge for District 11-¬‐1-¬‐04. The District comprises the municipalities of Pittston and the greater Pittston area, Duryea, Avoca, DuPont, and Hughestown. 
Singer graduated from Pittston Area High School in 1980 and immediately enrolled in the University of Scranton where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a duel Bachelor of Science Degrees in 1984. He earned his Juris Doctorate in 1987 from Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University. Singer was admitted into the Practice of Law in 1987 and in all courts in the State of Pennsylvania, the United States District Court for the Middle District, The United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the member of Lions International Attorney Singer was awarded the prestigious Melvin Jones Fellow Award. 
He has also served as President of the Hughestown Lions Club. Mark is an elder in the Second Presbyterian Church of Pittston, a member of the Keystone Consistory and an Irem Temple Shriner. 
Attorney Singer is son to the late Francis Anthony Singer from Avoca and Amelia Lena (Foglia) of Hughestown. He is married to the former Heidi Baldygo and they have one daughter Anjelica Nicola, a student at the Pittston Area Middle School. 
Additional information on Attorney Mark A. Singer may be found on his website United States Supreme Court. He began his career after Law School in Lehigh County as a Public Defender and Attorney Singer has since served as an Assistant District Attorney for Luzerne County, and First Assistant Liaison to the Lower Lackawanna/Upper Luzerne County Drug Task Force. In addition, Mark Singer has served the Municipal Police Officers Education and Training Commission (M.P.O.E.T.C.) for nearly10 years, as an Instructor. Mark was also Adjunct Instructor in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at Luzerne County Community College. He has also been an advisor to the Pittston Area Young Lawyers. 
As a Defense Attorney, Singer is one of twelve (12) attorneys certified to defend capital cases. He has prosecuted murders, rapists, burglars, drug dealers, child abusers and those that prey upon the elderly. Mark is the only candidate to prosecute as well as defend a Death Penalty case. Deeply involved within the community, Mark A. Singer has been active in the Pittston Area School District having been involved on the Board of Directors and a Region 7 Director to The Pennsylvania School Board Association. 
For more information, go to www.marksingerfordistrictjudge.com