The Voting Rights Act is facing the biggest threats in its 60 years

By George Chidi, The Guardian

Decades after its passage, the revolutionary law continues to face attempts to pervert its purpose

Facing images of violent white mobs defending racial segregation, the condemnation of the world and of its own citizens, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, a law meant to end the hypocrisy of a democratic country that denied Black people the power of their vote.

Sixty years later, race remains at the center of American politics. Cases before the US supreme court, and a platoon of Texas legislators fleeing the state to prevent redistricting, demonstrate how the Voting Rights Act – and its erosion – remains on the frontline of the political battlefield.

“Democracy is at stake,” said Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Even as voting rights advocates use the act to win additional congressional representation in Alabama and press cases in Louisiana and North Carolina, a conservative supreme court makes gains precarious, he said.

“We wouldn’t be under such a threat if we weren’t doing so well in making sure our communities were engaged, that they were turning out and that their rights were protected,” Cox said. “This is a cyclical part of history, that when we see some success in advancing rights, there’s always backlash.”

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