The 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act
A half-century later, what is the status of voting rights for African Americans and other minorities?
When a young John Lewis protested for voting rights in 1964, there were just three African Americans in Congressand 300 Black elected officials in the United States
More than a half-century later, there are about 10,000 Black elected officials nationwide, including Lewis and 45 of his Black colleagues in Congress.
On Aug. 6th the federal legislation that is largely credited with helping Blacks to vote turns 50.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before Lewis and other civil rights leaders. The law was aimed at helping Blacks overcome legal barriers throughout the nation that prevented them from voting.
“Before the act was passed, my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had never cast a vote in this country, even though a constitutional amendment assured their right to vote decades before,” said Lewis, who now represents Georgia’s 5th congressional district.
From unfair poll taxes to literacy tests, local governments mainly in the South developed multiple ways to keep Blacks away from the polls.
“They were very smart as far as having a strategy of preventing us from voting,” said Khalilah Brown-Dean, assistant professor of political science at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.
But activists fought for change. Many, like Lewis, were jailed and some were killed. Lewis’ skull was fractured while he was trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The tragic event, known as Bloody Sunday, was captured in the 2014 film Selma.
“The anniversary reminds us that we have to continue to fight for those rights to be protected,” said Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on the Black Civic Participation.
A big obstacle today for the act: A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively free nine states, mostly in the South, to change election laws without advance federal approval, Campbell said.
The ruling had an immediate impact, said Barbara Arnwine, president and CEO of the Lawyer’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Many Blacks were blocked from polls in Texas because the state was able to allow only a few forms of identification for voting: driver’s licenses, state handgun permits, passports, and veteran’s ID cards, she said.
But in some states 20 different forms of identifications are allowed, she added.
The Supreme Court’s decision, however, allows Congress to try to impose oversight on states where voting rights are at risk.
Activists are now attempting to get Congress to deal with the issue. But there are no plans to discuss the act.
“If we are willing to fight for democracy abroad, we have to protect it here as well,” Brown-Dean said.
-Norman Parish III
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