The national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was always intended to be more than a celebration of his life. Its greater purpose is for people to dedicate themselves to continuing King’s work of using nonviolence to create a more just and equitable nation.
But before this year, never has there been an MLK Day when the signature accomplishment attached to King’s legacy, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has been in such peril.
The civil rights movement was the largest and most sustained mass mobilization to expand democracy in U.S. history. For all the overuse of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and confinement of King to that one speech, he states clearly that his dream is rooted in the American dream.
His greatest biographer, Taylor Branch, calls him a “modern founding father,” saying that like the original Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln, King and the movement promoted equal citizenship, and the idea of equal votes and equal souls.
Taking the founders’ original framework for democracy, which didn’t include everyone in its picture, King enlarged it to encompass all.
The crowning achievements of the civil rights movement were the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which came after the Birmingham campaign, and the Voting Rights Act, which came after the Selma campaign. On March 25, 1965, at the conclusion of the five-day, 54-mile Selma to Montgomery March, King delivered an oration of optimism.
“I know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?’”
He answered his own questions. “How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.”
His repeated refrain of “How long? Not long” rang with a hope affirmed that summer when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
Sadly, “How long? Not long” now sounds like a prediction on the life span of the act.
Its heart was removed by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. The court ruled unconstitutional the section requiring specific local and state governments be precleared by the federal government before changing voting laws. Those provisions were in place in nine Southern states, including Texas, because they had a history of racial discrimination in voting.
In 2021, the court upheld a pair of Arizona voting restrictions that severely weakened the section of the Voting Rights Act prohibiting laws and procedures that discriminate based on race. Last year also saw an escalation of “election integrity” legislation passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures. These new laws will make voting more difficult.
The Senate is set to vote on the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, whose passage is the only defense against the assault on voting rights. Its passage is doubtful; there is no Republican support to get it the necessary 60 votes, and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona object to changing filibuster rules to allow passage by a simple majority.
Protecting the right to vote and the election process should be a bipartisan endeavor. The 30 Republicans who voted for the Voting Rights Act in 1965 understood this.
The zenith of the civil rights movement and King’s career was the broadening of American democracy through protected access to the ballot box.
The task of MLK Day 2022 isn’t simply continuing the work of King, it’s fighting to keep that work from being undone.
San Antonio Express-News
