With democracy now being tested as never before, with MAGA conspirators crafting their best-laid plans to disempower voters and rig the 2024 election, it strikes me as necessary – albeit bittersweet – to remember that on this date in 1965, our leaders in the White House and on Capitol Hill celebrated the signing of an historic law that seemingly established, for all time, equality in the voting booth.
The Voting Rights Act erased the various state and local barriers that prevented people of color (especially in the South) from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed by the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This law was one of our most ambitious and impactful pieces of civil rights legislation – until recently, when the Republican appointees to the Supreme Court took it upon themselves to whittle it away; and when Republican-run states began to take advantage by enacting a slew of vote suppression laws. Which we continue to witness today.
May the memory of Aug. 6, 1965 never fade. What President Lyndon Johnson said that day:
“Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield…This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies…
“(This) is one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom…There were those who said smaller and more gradual measures should be tried. But they had been tried. For years and years they had been tried, and tried, and tried, and they had failed, and failed, and failed. And the time for failure is gone. There were those who said that this is a many-sided and very complex problem. But however viewed, the denial of the right to vote is still a deadly wrong. And the time for injustice has gone.
“This law covers many pages. But the heart of the act is plain. Wherever, by clear and objective standards, states and counties are using regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote, then they will be struck down…And I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.
“So, through this act, and its enforcement, an important instrument of freedom passes into the hands of millions of our citizens…The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice…
“So, we will move step by step – often painfully but, I think, with clear vision – along the path toward American freedom. It is difficult to fight for freedom. But I also know how difficult it can be to bend long years of habit and custom to grant it. There is no room for injustice anywhere in the American mansion. But there is always room for understanding toward those who see the old ways crumbling. And to them today I say simply this: It must come. It is right that it should come.
“The central fact of American civilization – one so hard for others to understand – is that freedom and justice and the dignity of man are not just words to us. We believe in them. Under all the growth and the tumult and abundance, we believe. And so, as long as some among us are oppressed – and we are part of that oppression – it must blunt our faith and sap the strength of our high purpose.
“(This is) a victory for the freedom of the American nation. And every family across this great, entire, searching land will live stronger in liberty, will live more splendid in expectation, and will be prouder to be American because of the act that I will sign today.”
There is still time for the new White House and the Capitol Hill Democrats to act on behalf of those of us in the anti-fascist majority. There is still time for them to salvage LBJ’s ideals and enact a new voting rights act, if only they have the will to flex the requisite muscle. They need to heed what Bob Dylan once said in a song:
“It’s not dark yet / But it’s gettin’ there.”