By Marian Wright Edelman
This month marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the historic legislation President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law at the U.S. Capitol with many of the Democratic and Republican lawmakers who had helped secure its large bipartisan victory and civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and Mrs. Rosa Parks, by his side. In his remarks President Johnson was very clear as he shared his views about the truth of American history that began in 1619 and led up to that moment:
“Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield. Yet to seize the meaning of this day, we must recall darker times. Three and a half centuries ago the first Negroes arrived at Jamestown. They did not arrive in brave ships in search of a home for freedom. They did not mingle fear and joy, in expectation that in this New World anything would be possible to a man strong enough to reach for it. They came in darkness and they came in chains. And today we strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds. Today the Negro story and the American story fuse and blend.”
President Johnson continued: “The stories of our Nation and of the American Negro are like two great rivers. Welling up from that tiny Jamestown spring they flow through the centuries along divided channels. When pioneers subdued a continent to the need of man, they did not tame it for the Negro. When the Liberty Bell rang out in Philadelphia, it did not toll for the Negro. When Andrew Jackson threw open the doors of democracy, they did not open for the Negro. It was only at Appomattox, a century ago, that an American victory was also a Negro victory. And the two rivers—one shining with promise, the other dark-stained with oppression—began to move toward one another. Yet, for almost a century the promise of that day was not fulfilled. Today is a towering and certain mark that, in this generation, that promise will be kept. In our time the two currents will finally mingle and rush as one great stream across the uncertain and the marvelous years of the America that is yet to come.”
After outlining concrete steps his administration would take next to do its part to fulfill this promise and enforce the law, President Johnson ended his remarks by returning to the American ideals the Voting Rights Act embodied: “The central fact of American civilization—one so hard for others to understand—is that freedom and justice and the dignity of man are not just words to us. We believe in them. Under all the growth and the tumult and abundance, we believe. And so, as long as some among us are oppressed—and we are part of that oppression—it must blunt our faith and sap the strength of our high purpose. Thus, this is a victory for the freedom of the American Negro. But it is also a victory for the freedom of the American Nation. And every family across this great, entire, searching land will live stronger in liberty, will live more splendid in expectation, and will be prouder to be American because of the act that you have passed that I will sign today.”
The contrast between that moment and this one is abundantly clear.
When the Voting Rights Act was first enacted, I was in the trenches as a young civil rights lawyer directing the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) office in Jackson, Mississippi. As LDF and its current President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson say, that battle has a new front today: “[W]e again find ourselves at a moment where Black people’s political power is under severe threat, and the legitimacy of our democracy is undermined as a result. In recent years, the legislative intent of the VRA was severely undercut by two Supreme Court decisions, rendering the law unable to fully protect those it was designed to empower. When coupled with the passage of regressive voting rights laws at the state level, it’s abundantly clear that American democracy is in crisis. States with a history of race discrimination in voting are continuing to suppress the votes of our country’s most marginalized groups in a concerted effort to consolidate power and further entrench white supremacy with sanction from a majority in Congress that refuses to act . . . If we are to continue the pursuit of the multiracial democracy that the VRA set in motion 60 years ago and if we are to honor our republican form of government founded on representation by the people, we must be unwavering in our commitment to fulfill the promise of Selma, refuse to cede any further ground, and mobilize in support of equal voting rights and fair elections.”
Today LDF and Children’s Defense Fund are both among the more than 200 coalition members of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights calling on Congress to renew the commitment to protecting the freedom to vote by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and inviting Americans everywhere to join the same call. It is a reaffirmation of the fundamental American belief that freedom and justice and dignity are not just words and the unceded determination to fulfill the complete promise of the America that is yet to come.