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Beyond
the
Bridge:
The
Voter
Suppression
Never
Ended
Op-Ed by
JESSE
JACKSON
January
27, 2015
CHICAGO
- The
stirring
film
Selma
ends
with Dr.
King
leading
civil
rights
marchers
across
the
bridge
and to
passage
of the
Voting
Rights
Act of
1965. It
will
help a
new
generation
of
Americans
appreciate
that
historic
accomplishment.
But what
should
not be
forgotten
is that
the
passage
of the
Voting
Rights
Act
wasn’t
the end
of the
battle.
The
effort
to
suppress
the
rights
of
African
Americans
to vote
continued.
Southern
states
and
localities
invented
a range
of
techniques
– from
making
voting
and
registration
difficult
to
gerrymandering
districts
to get
the
right
results.
African
Americans
made
progress,
but not
without
a fight.
Vital to
the
continuing
fight
was the
Voting
Rights
Act,
particularly
section
5 which
gave the
Department
of
Justice
the
right of
pre-clearance
of any
substantial
change
in
voting
procedures
or laws
in
states
that had
a
history
of
racial
suppression
of the
vote.
But in
the 2013
Supreme
Court
case of
Shelby
County
vs.
Holder,
the five
person
right-wing
majority
of the
Court
ruled,
in an
opinion
written
Chief
Justice
John
Roberts,
that
Section
5 was
outmoded
and
unnecessary,
and thus
a
violation
of the
Constitution.
This
breathtaking
leap of
judicial
activism
disabled
the key
enforcement
provisions
of the
Voting
Rights
Act.
Immediately,
Republicans
across
the
country
began to
pass
laws
designed
to
constrict
the
vote, as
well as
elaborate
gerrymanders
designed
to
magnify
the
effect
of white
votes.
New laws
in 21
states
made it
harder
to vote.
New
forms of
government
ID were
required
– in
effect a
tax on
those –
largely
elderly
people
of color
–
without
them.
Restrictions
were
passed
to make
registration
and
voting
harder,
to cut
off
student
participation.
Voting
hours
were
reduced;
voting
booths
cut and
made
less
accessible,
and
more.
Republicans
claimed
that
there
were
measures
to cut
down on
voter
fraud
but were
unable
to
demonstrate
that
there
was any
voter
fraud to
worry
about.
As
President
Obama
said in
April,
““The
stark
and
simple
truth is
this —
the
right to
vote is
threatened
today —
in a way
that it
has not
been
since
the
Voting
Rights
Act
became
law
nearly
five
decades
ago,”
And
these
laws are
having
the
effect
intended.
In North
Carolina’s
tight
Senate
race in
2014,
Republican
Tom
Tillis
beat
incumbent
Kay
Hagen by
about
43,000
votes
(1.7% of
the
vote).
Tillis
had
ushered
through
the
state
legislature
one of
the
harshest
voter
suppression
laws,
eliminating
seven
days of
early
voting
(and at
least
one
Sunday
of “get
your
souls to
the
polls”
rallies
at
African
American
churches),
eliminating
same day
registration,
forcing
voters
to vote
in their
own
precinct
and
more.
700,000
voters
had
voted in
the now
eliminated
early
seven-day
window
in 2012,
200,000
in the
2012
bi-election.
100,000
largely
African
American
voters
took
advantage
of same
day
registration
in 2012.
The
voters
eliminated
may well
have
exceeded
the vote
margin.
Similarly
in
Florida,
Governor
Rick
Scott
reversed
his
predecessor’s
reforms
that
allowed
former
convicts
who had
served
their
time to
regain
the
right to
vote.
That
disenfranchised
far more
than
Scott’s
margin
over his
Democratic
opponent.
In
Florida,
an ugly
one in
three
African
American
men is
permanently
disenfranchised.
This is
the new
Jim Crow
on the
march.
Making
registration
and
voting
easy and
accessible
to
minorities,
students,
the
elderly,
the
disabled,
the
working
class
isn’t
hard. We
know
what
works.
What we
witness
is
simply a
continuation
of the
battle
that
reached
one of
its
turning
points
on the
Edmund
Pettus
Bridge
in
Selma.
The
Voting
Rights
Act was
passed,
but the
opponents
of equal
rights
never
surrendered.
They
have
continued
to
resist
and
obstruct.
What the
film
Selma
depicts
is
history,
but it
is also
a call
to
action –
for the
struggle
for even
the
basic
right to
vote in
America
is still
not
secure.
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