Thousands gathered with President Obama this weekend at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” march on March 7, 1965.They gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a brutal police assault on civil rights demonstrators that spurred the passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. In 1963, only 156 of 15,000 eligible black voters in Selma, Alabama, were registered to vote.
The federal government filed four lawsuits against Alabama county registrars between 1963 and 1965, but the number of black registered voters only increased from 156 to 383 during that time. The federal government couldn’t keep up with the pace and intensity of voter suppression with existing laws.
The Voting Rights Act, signed by President Johnson in August 1965, ended the blight of voting discrimination in places like Selma by eliminating the literacy tests and poll taxes that prevented so many people from voting. (VRA)
The Selma of yesteryear is reminiscent of the current situation in Texas, where one of the nation's most restrictive voter photo ID laws remains enforce. This restrictive and discriminatory law has been twice blocked by federal courts finding it to be a discriminatory poll tax, but it has been twice revived by the Supreme Court. The law remains enforce today, but the struggle for voting rights continues. Read on...
