Latest news with #U.S.VotingRightsAct
Toronto Star
4 days ago
- Politics
- Toronto Star
The Voting Rights Act is turning 60. Civil rights marchers recall a hard-won struggle
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Facing a sea of state troopers, Charles Mauldin was near the front line of voting rights marchers who strode across the now-infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. The violence that awaited them shocked the nation and galvanized support for the passage of the U.S. Voting Rights Act a few months later.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
The Voting Rights Act is turning 60. Civil rights marchers recall a hard-won struggle
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Facing a sea of state troopers, Charles Mauldin was near the front line of voting rights marchers who strode across the now-infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. The violence that awaited them shocked the nation and galvanized support for the passage of the U.S. Voting Rights Act a few months later. Wednesday marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark legislation becoming law. Those at the epicenter of the fight for voting rights for Black Americans recalled their memories of the struggle, and expressed fear that those hard-won rights are being eroded. Bloody Sunday in Alabama, 1965 Mauldin was 17 when he joined the ill-fated 'Bloody Sunday' march. John Lewis, who became a longtime Georgia congressman, and Hosea Williams were the first pair of marchers. Mauldin was in the third pair. 'We had gotten past being afraid at that point. What was happening in Selma and to us was so unjust that we were determined to fight it regardless of the consequences,' Mauldin, now 77, said. The head of the state troopers told them that they were in an illegal gathering and had two minutes to disperse. Williams asked for a moment to pray, Mauldin recalled. Immediately, state troopers in gas masks and helmets, as well as deputies and men on horseback, attacked the marchers — men, women, children. They lashed out with billy clubs and tear gas, with stomping horse hooves and cattle prods. A cause worth dying for Richard Smiley, then 16, was also among the marchers. He stashed candy in his pockets so he would have something to eat in case they went to jail. As they approached the bridge, he saw about 100 white men on horseback. 'The only qualification they needed was to hate Blacks,' Smiley said. 'Our knees were knocking. We didn't know whether we were going to get killed. We were afraid but we weren't going to let fear stop us,' Smiley, 76, recalled. 'At that point we would've gave up our life for the right to vote. That's just how important it was.' Selma in 1965 was a 'very poor city and a racist city,' he said. He said there were some 'white people in the town that supported our cause, but they couldn't stand up' because of what would happen to them. Echoes of the past The Voting Rights Act led to sweeping change across the American South as discriminatory voting practices were dismantled and Black voter turnout surged. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson called the act 'a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory won on any battlefield,' when he signed it on Aug. 6, 1965. However, both Mauldin and Smiley see echoes of the past in the current political climate. While not as extreme as the policies of the Jim Crow South, Mauldin said there are attacks on the rights of Black and brown voters. 'The same struggle we had 61 years ago is the same struggle we had today,' Mauldin said. Some states have enacted laws that make it harder not easier to vote, with voter ID requirements, limits to mail voting and other changes. President Donald Trump and Republican-led states have pushed sweeping rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives with Trump declaring he 'ended the tyranny' of such programs. The Justice Department, once focused on protecting access to voting, is taking steps to investigate alleged voter fraud and noncitizen voting. The department is joining Alabama in opposing a request to require the state to get future congressional maps precleared for use, calling it 'a dramatic intrusion on principles of federalism.' A long, unfinished struggle The fight for voting rights was a long struggle, as is the struggle to maintain those rights, said Hank Sanders, a former state senator who helped organize the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration in Selma. Two weeks after Bloody Sunday, the Rev. Martin Luther King led marchers out on the walk to Montgomery, Alabama, to continue the fight for voting rights. Sanders was among the thousands who completed the last legs of the march and listened as King's famous words 'How long, not long' thundered down over the crowd. 'That was a very powerful moment because I left there convinced that it wouldn't be long before people would have the full voting rights,' Sanders, 82, recalled. He said the reality it would be a longer fight set in the next year when a slate of Black candidates lost in an overwhelmingly Black county The Voting Rights Act for decades required that states with a history of discrimination — including many in the South — get federal approval before changing the way they hold elections. The requirement of preclearance effectively went away in 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a case arising from Alabama, that the provision determining which states are covered was outdated and unconstitutional. That led to a flood of legislation in states impacting voting, Sanders said. 'It's no longer a shower, t's a storm,' Sanders said. 'I never thought that 50 years later, we'd still be fighting,' Sanders said, 'not just to expand voting right but to be able to maintain some of the rights that we had already obtained.'
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Mississippi House, Senate districts not yet approved by federal court panel
As Pamela McKelvy, a Desoto County resident, watched attorneys representing her, several Mississippi voters and the NAACP make arguments on Tuesday against two legislative redistricting plans that are aimed at remeding a dilution of Black-voting power, one word came to mind: Progress. That is what she is now hoping for as a federal court panel mulls whether to adopt those plans to redistrict several state House and Senate districts following arguments made by attorneys representing the NAACP and the State Board of Election Commissioners on Tuesday, April 8. '(The case) is very important for the kind of change that we need, because Mississippi hopefully will have a future greater than its past," McKelvy said on the steps of the Thad Cochran U.S. Court House in Downtown Jackson. The panel of federal judges, comprised of U.S. district court judges Daniel Jordan III and Sul Ozerden and U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Leslie Southwick, did not indicate at the end of Tuesday's hearing if or when it would sign off on the Legislature's redistricting plan or adopt a new one. During the hearing, attorneys representing the NAACP argued the Legislature's plan, which would if approved redraw 15 districts in the Hattiesburg area, the Golden Triangle and Desoto County, does not meet the requirement of the court's order in House District 1 in Chickasaw County and a Senate district in Desoto County. Redistricting plan in legislature: House, Senate pass redistricting plan for 15 districts. See whose seat is up for election On the other side, the state's attorneys argued the Legislature adopted a plan that gives Black voters an equal chance now to elect candidates of their choosing in newly established Black-majority districts. The Legislature this year passed a plan to redraw the district map to comply with a 2024 court order demanding legislative districts be redrawn because of U.S. Voting Rights Act violations created from the 2022 legislative redistricting. The case was filed in 2022 by several voters and the NAACP after the state's last redistricting. Lawmakers voted to redraw five House districts near and in the Golden Triangle but without creating a new Black majority district with no-incumbent. Instead, lawmakers approved making Republican Rep. Jon Lancaster's district in Chickasaw County a now majority-Black district. Lawmakers also created a new Black-majority district in Desoto County and the Hattiesburg area with no incumbents. To account for the new districts, lawmakers corralled some members in pairs to then run against each other in other districts. ACLU attorney representing the NAACP, Ari Savitzky, told the panel that the new districts in Desoto and Chickasaw County appear to now be numerically Black-majority districts but due to several factors such as socioeconomics, previous voting history and a prior elections results analysis, these would not realistically remedy the dilution of Black voting strength. 'Black voters still have less opportunity to elect candidates of choice to the Senate and House, respectively, as compared to white voters," Savitzky said. "The 'opportunities' they create are illusory." Attorneys representing the State Board of Election Commissioners, the defendants, said the goal of the redistricting was not to guarantee Black voters can elect their candidates in Black majority district but to give them a fair chance. NAACP, Desoto County challenging plan: NAACP intends to challenge Legislature redistricting plan. See details "We believe that the plaintiff's objections with the alternative plans they're looking for are a guarantee that a Black Democrat will be elected in each of the reconfigured districts, and that is a bridge too far," said Tommie Carlin, state attorney. During both sides' arguments regarding House districts, judges on the panel pushed back on attorneys' positions on whether to adopt the Legislature's plan and if the state's goal not to guarantee Black-voter victories was also a major consideration in their ruling. Savitzky said while the House district in Chickasaw County is now a Black-majority district in the Legislature plan, because Lancaster is a white incumbent, that would not realistically create a chance for Black voters. Both sides also made arguments for and against the Legislature's redraw of the Desoto County area, which is also being challenged by the Desoto County Board of Supervisors. Judges asked specifically in that area what would be enough to remedy Black-voter dilution, and whether it would be a simple majority, as in the Senate plan, or an 'effective majority,' as argued for by the NAACP. Cardin said that instead of judging whether Black voters and candidates will have a guaranteed success in an election, the panel should look only at whether the new district complies with current federal law and the Voting Rights Act. "This is not a beauty contest amongst plans where the court fixes and chooses that one plan is superior," Carlin said. "This is a singular focus on whether or not the legislative plans afford a remedy." Savitzky argued that by not creating an effective majority for Black voters in the new Senate district, the Legislature was not giving those voters a realistic chance of electing a candidate of their choice, calling them coinflip districts. The panel would effectively have until before April 25 to issue a decision on the redistricting plan, which is when the new maps and address libraries would be delivered to local election officials. Any ruling issued after that would require the special elections deadlines to be moved. The defendants urged the panel to make a speedy decision so that it could also possibly submit an alternative plan to what the court approves as the new map. If the plan is adopted as is within the given timeframe, qualifying periods start on May 19 and the deadline would be May 30. Primaries would be on August 5 and the general election would be on Nov. 4. Grant McLaughlin covers the Legislature and state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@ or 972-571-2335. This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Federal court panel hears arguments on Mississippi redistricting plan
