By Ashleigh Fields
AFRO Assistant Editor
afields@afro.com
A massive wave of political justice advocates gathered in Selma, Ala. March 3 to promote the John Lewis Voting Rights Act amidst the state’s Supreme and lower courts repealing legislation to prevent disenfranchisement. The group, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.-6), Steny Hoyer (D-M.D.- 5) and newly appointed Senator Laphonza Butler (D-CA) marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate “Bloody Sunday.”
On March 7, 1965 over 600 civil rights demonstrators were violently attacked by state troopers as they marched across the 54-mile highway from Selma, Ala., to the state capital of Montgomery to protest the violation of their constitutional rights to vote.
“Hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, they marched for the freedoms that were theirs by birth and theirs by right: the freedom to vote, the freedom to live without fear of violence or intimidation, the freedom to be full and equal members of our nation,” shared Harris, according to a transcription sent out by her office.
Over 59 years later, the Black community still faces discrimination.
Butler shared a statement addressing the 2013 case, Shelby County v. Holder, which eliminated necessary federal protections for minority voters in various jurisdictions and the 2021 Brnovich v. DNC, which adopted ‘guideposts’ that make it hard to prove racial discrimination when casting a ballot.
“Though state lawmakers and election officials may no longer make voters of color count the number of jelly beans in a jar or the number of bubbles on a bar of soap, we know that they continue to draw racially discriminatory Congressional districts in a way that prevents voters of color from electing the candidates of their choice,” Butler wrote. “One need only to look to the Alabama State Capitol just a short walk away from where we sit today and the state legislature’s attempt to defy the Supreme Court’s order in Allen v. Milligan last summer to draw an additional majority-Black congressional district to understand that some things have not changed.”
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that Republican lawmakers clearly violated voter’s rights after they redrew the state’s congressional map after the 2020 census and failed to create a second Black district. Due to the disparities, lawmakers have committed to gathering in Selma annually to convene with local leaders.
“I come back to Alabama – to Montgomery and Selma – first, because I was so close to John Lewis. I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge 15 times with John Lewis, seven of which I held his hand as we walked across. That was one of the highlights of my life because John Lewis exuded the best of us in America, the best of us as human beings, the best of us as children of God,” Hoyer expressed. “It wasn’t so long ago that civil rights leaders, like my dear friend and brother John Lewis, put everything on the line in Alabama and across the country to advance voting rights for African Americans.”
Currently, members of Congress are pushing to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in his honor which would require states to seek federal approval before changing their voting laws.
