The 100th Day Threat to Voting Rights

While the press was reviewing President Obama’s scorecard and Senate Democrats were welcoming Arlen Specter, the Supreme Court was weighing scaling back voter protections. Here’s why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is in serious jeopardy.

By: Sherrilyn A. Ifill

On the 100th day of the first term of the first black president of the United States, lawyers for a small utility district in Travis County, Texas, walked up the steps of the Supreme Court Building to ask the nine justices of the court to dismantle a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Ironies abound.

Without the Voting Rights Act, there would be no President Obama. When it was passed, the Voting Rights Act, known as “the crown jewel of the civil rights movement,” began the process of fully realizing the promise of the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, which in 1870 extended the right to vote to African Americans, or at least to African-American men. In the years between 1870 and 1965, however, the vast majority of blacks were largely disenfranchised by Southern legislators and jurisdictions that used intimidation, arcane registration practices, gerrymandering, poll taxes and violence to keep the black population from exercising the franchise. The Voting Rights Act was a result of the literal blood, sweat and tears of civil rights activists, among them Medgar Evers; Fannie Lou Hamer; Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner; and a young John Lewis, who nearly lost his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

The enactment and enforcement of the Voting Rights Act ensured the enfranchisement of black voters across the South and, over the years, made possible the election of over 10,000 black officials at every level of public office, from school boards to Congress, including Lewis. Over the past 40 years, black elected officials have become an integral part of the political landscape of the country. Consequently, white voters have become accustomed to the experience of black political leadership, and black voters have been organized and mobilized at unprecedented levels. These key developments laid the groundwork for the impressive, if unsuccessful, runs of Jesse Jackson for president in the 1980s and the ultimately successful candidacy of Barack Obama last year.

The 100th Day Threat to Voting Rights....