Passing a new voting rights act to deal with our shameful history on African-American voter suppression
7 March 2024
From today’s blog by historian Heather Cox Richardson:
Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.
In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, but the measure did not adequately address the problem of voter suppression. In Selma a judge had stopped the voter registration protests by issuing an injunction prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.
Democrats have tried since 2021 to pass a voting rights act but have been stymied by Republicans, who oppose such protections. Last September, on National Voter Registration Day, House Democrats reintroduced a voting rights act, now named the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act after the man who went on from his days in the Civil Rights Movement to serve 17 terms as a representative from Georgia, bearing the scars of March 7, 1965, until he died on July 17, 2020.
On March 1, 2024, 51 Democratic senators introduced the measure in the Senate.
Speaking in Selma last Sunday at the commemoration of the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris shared that the first thing she sees on walking into her office is a “large framed photograph taken on Bloody Sunday depicting an injured Amelia Boynton receiving care at the foot of [the Edmund Pettus] bridge.”
“[F]or me,” she said, “it is a daily reminder of the struggle, of the sacrifice, and of how much we owe to those who gave so much before us.”
“History is a relay race,” she said. “Generations before us carried the baton. And now, they have passed it to us.” More here.
Our nation is stronger, both economically and politically, when all its residents have full and equal rights. We need to support these efforts to pass a voting rights act by supporting Democrats and rejecting the bigotry of Republicans who are opposing it.
Related essays:
It's time for all of us who oppose bigotry to find our voice, 3 March 2023
What you can do to save democracy, according to Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's Secretary of State, 27 February 2024
2024 resolution: Save democracy, 31 December 2023
Effective government requires our participation, 12 October 2023
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