‘We’re going backwards’: Five civil rights activists slam the supreme court’s gutting of Voting Rights Act

The supreme court’s recent decision to gut the Voting Rights Act is an affront to everyone who marched, bled and died to make that law possible, civil rights activists said. “When we look at the supreme court’s action against the Voting Rights Act, it’s really a kneecap – a way to discriminate, to silence voters who fought so hard for this right,” said Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who, at eight years old, marched with civil rights leaders in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The Louisiana v Callais ruling eviscerated the provision of the law that prevented racial discrimination in voting practices and gave minority voters the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. Just eight days after the decision, the Republican-led Tennessee legislature passed new redistricting maps, eliminating the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district. Other southern states, like Mississippi , are expected to follow suit. But the struggle for voter enfranchisement is as old as the US itself. When the country was founded, voting was limited to white male landowners. After the American civil war, Black American men were granted the right to vote under the 15th amendment – and they did so in droves, electing Black senators and representatives to serve in Congress. White southern Democrats responded with violence, fraud, poll taxes and literacy tests that gutted Black political power and erased Black congressional representation for generations. …