In late June of 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, stating that the provision, which, for almost 50 years, had required that certain areas of the country with dismal civil rights records obtain approval from the Justice Department or a special federal court before changing their voting laws, was unconstitutional. [Justice Scalia, one of the five conservative justices to vote in favor of striking down this particular component of the landmark civil rights legislation, has described the Voting Rights Act in the past as, “the perpetuation of a racial entitlement.”] Well, today, we’re beginning to see the results of this decision, which Georgia congressman John Lewis, an African American who had fought for equal rights alongside Martin Luther King, called at the time “a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act.” In Alabama today, it was announced that 31 Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) locations in predominately black areas of Alabama would be closing, making it more difficult for people of color to acquire the identification required to vote… The following comes from The Nation:
…(Alabama) is shuttering DMV offices in eight of the 10 counties with the highest concentration of black voters. Selma will still have a DMV office but virtually all of the surrounding Black Belt counties will not. “Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed,” writes John Archibald of the Birmingham News. “The harm is inflicted disproportionately on voters who happen to be black, and poor, in sparsely populated areas.”
…Alabama describes the closings as a cost-saving measure, but the impact has clear racial and political overtones. Writes Archibald:
“Look at the 15 counties that voted for President Barack Obama in the last presidential election. The state just decided to close driver license offices in 53 percent of them.
Look at the five counties that voted most solidly Democratic? Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes and Bullock counties all had their driver license offices closed.
Look at the 10 that voted most solidly for Obama? Of those, eight—again all but Dallas and the state capital of Montgomery—had their offices closed.”
This, for what it’s worth, is exactly what many of us thought would begin happening in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court Decision. At the time, I asked the following on this site… “So, now what? With this central protection of the Voting Rights Act gone, shouldn’t we expect to see a rise, especially in the south, of racially discriminatory voting practices?.”
I guess, today, we got our answer.
And it’s our fault. We could have fought harder. We could have demanded that Congress step in and pass legislation to protect the Voting Rights Act once the Supreme Court made their decision. But we sat by and allowed the historic legislation to be gutted. And now we’re going to have to fight the grueling battles of the 1960s all over again… I wish we had longer memories. I wish we remembered how hard it was to fight for things like civil rights and the 40 hour work week. But we don’t. We don’t remember the sacrifices that were made by the people who came before us, like these two men protesting in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. And, as a result, we’re doomed to relive every bloody minute of it. Only, this time, we’re facing an opposition that is both better armed and better funded.
