On March 31, 1870, Thomas Mundy Peterson did what no African American had ever done in this country -- he voted.

There was too much blood soaking the ground for him to sleep in that day. Tom Peterson had the souls of 600,000 soldiers who died in the Civil War weighing on his conscience.

That's why the son of slaves braved the angry stares of the white men of Perth Amboy, N.J., to cast his vote.

Those who considered Tom Peterson's humble act of civic participation an abomination feared what would happen if every black man similarly rejected his second-class status.

The 46-year-old school custodian didn't care about the racial insecurities of his neighbors. All he wanted was to make sure that the newly ratified 15th Amendment was more than just words on paper:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

Born on the Mundy plantation in rural Metuchen, N.J., Tom Peterson was too grateful for what the Great Emancipator had done for his people to vote anything but Republican.

Abraham Lincoln would have been pleased by the sight of Tom Peterson waiting his turn to cast his vote and startled that every black man in that town wasn't standing behind him.

The 16th president of the United States upended the social order to make men like Tom Peterson beacons of democracy the Constitution prophesied.

Thomas Mundy Peterson was the son of slaves who never believed their descendents would be anything other than slaves themselves. They would have been pleased to see their son standing as a free man, waiting to sign the voters' ledger that day.

Had his parents lived long enough to see him ascend to elected office on the Middlesex County Commission, they would have fretted over how fast and how high he rose in a white man's world.

Tom Peterson lived and died decades before the Jim Crow era made a mockery of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

He lived long enough to see Reconstruction -- the great democratic hope of a people long despised for having been born with black skin -- fail miserably. He saw the rights he asserted in the spring of 1870 disappear all over the land, especially in the South where poll taxes and literacy tests were a way of life.

He saw the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and other manifestations of hatred and stupidity take root in the country's blood soaked soil. He stood against the darkness as best he could from his home in New Jersey.

All Tom Peterson could do was vote until God called him home to a more perfect plebiscite. As he lay dying in 1904, Tom Peterson must have wondered if he would one day be looked upon as an oddity -- a black man who believed in the outrageous conceits of American democracy.

One hundred and four years after he was laid to rest, too many black men and women subscribe to the same beliefs that motivated the racists of his era to oppose his right to vote.

Here in Allegheny County, tens of thousands of eligible citizens drift in a sea of voter apathy on the eve of the most historic election of our lifetime.

Last week, I heard a man tell a young canvasser Downtown that because his vote doesn't count in "racist America," he refused to register. That man is a disgrace to the memory of Tom Peterson. If he's lucky, he'll get his registration in before Monday's deadline for the November election.

Such stupidity and apathy is responsible for destroying more black lives than all the klansmen in history. Racist thugs can only kill the body. Blacks who don't vote corrode the soul of an entire community with their tiresome cynicism, which is only an excuse for laziness.

As much of a visionary as Tom Peterson was, he never imagined that his bravery would make it possible for Barack Obama to run for president in 2008. If he could have seen the future, the sheer audacity of such a candidacy would have struck him dead with wonder.

You can register to vote at the County Office Building, Downtown, and many other government offices. Call the county Elections Division at 412-350-4510 for more information, or consult the state's online service at votespa.com.