By Ken Koontz

I am voting because the right to do so was not initially given automatically or granted Constitutionally.

Voting, for citizens like me, came as result of demand from, murders of and bloodshed by people like me and our allies and there is no guarantee that it can’t be taken away or rescinded.

My vote counts. And if you don’t vote, you don’t count.

Ken Koontz, a reporter, anchor and community affairs director for WBTV from 1969 until 1983, was part-owner of the Excelsior Club in the mid-1980s when it became listed as an historic property. He once described the Beatties Ford Road club, opened in 1944 by Jimmy and Minnie McKee, as “the bedrock of black participation, involvement and collaboration with the bigger political community.” He holds a BA in French from Johnson C. Smith University.