The 1963 March on Washington was a watershed moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Today, 63 years later, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act, another March on Washington is planned for Aug. 28, 2026—this time to defend the right to vote.
And make no mistake, this court decision to essentially allow racial gerrymandering of legislative and congressional districts, aimed at preventing the election of people of color, means everyone’s right to vote is under attack.
Democracy itself is under direct attack.
Journalist and author Nikole Hannah-Jones, in an interview on MSNow, said, “I think we’ve done a grave disservice to both the truth and the enduring fight for equality when we frame the civil rights movement and the fight for voting rights as merely a Black rights movement. . . And it’s true, Black people were the ones willing to sacrifice their lives, their homes, their bodies in order to democratize America. But this really was about ensuring democracy for everyone….the grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and literacy tests [used in the past] disenfranchised nearly all Black people, but also significant numbers of white people who also could not come up with a poll tax or pass a literacy exam.”
She continued, “We are going to see the same thing with the fall of the Voting Rights Act….there’s many, many, many white Americans who also will have no political representation when they eliminate these Democratic seats….This is also going to lead to the end of democratic representation, and I mean small ‘d’ democratic representation, for lots of Black folks, lots of Latinos, lots of Asians…If you look at think tanks that study democracy, the US is a democracy in decline, and one of the last things that was holding back the elimination of democracy in America was the Voting Rights Act, because again, it protects all Americans and our right to choose our representation. Millions of Americans are going to lose that right.
“Black people [losing voting rights] should be enough [to mobilize people to react], by the way,” added Hannah-Jones.
Voices of Protest and Dissent
On April 29, immediately following the news of the Supreme Court decision, protests erupted in many parts of the country, including in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Tennessee legislature moved quickly to eliminate that state’s one Black-majority congressional district, and people gathered in Memphis to protest. Organizing continues in states throughout the South and elsewhere.
“We are here today because we are letting them know we are NOT going back, by any means necessary. And we stand here in solidarity with all of the citizens of Alabama,” said a woman protesting with thousands at the Alabama State Capitol immediately following the Supreme Court decision.
Felicia Boyd, a protester in Memphis told a reporter, “This [attack on the Black vote] is going across the South…We cannot let this happen to our country.”
Another Memphis protester, Sandra Barrett, a veteran, said the court’s decision and the legislature’s action “Is not only a huge slap in the face to veterans, but to the Black community, because they have sacrificed more than we can even imagine. And we’ve all got to stand up for our neighbors; we’re all neighbors and we’re all in this fight together.”
Below are comments from several state legislators during the floor debate over the redistricting map in Tennessee:
Sen. Raumesh Akbari, Memphis Democrat: “Memphis is a city of sanitation workers that proudly proclaimed, ‘I am a man.’… Memphis is the balcony where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Memphis is a place where he took his last footsteps. Memphis is sacred ground in our civil rights story in American history.
“And now, barely a few days after the Supreme Court weakened what remained of the historic Voting Rights Act, this legislature rushes to carve up a very community where Dr. King gave his life fighting for dignity, economic justice and the rights of the oppressed, a city that is 64% Black, a congressional district that is 61% Black, and somehow we are supposed to believe that the dismantling of this district has nothing to do with race.
“…The people that came before us did not sacrifice so that their representation could become optional. They believed that America could become what it said it always has been, and today we’re being asked that very question: ‘Do we believe that America will be what it’s always said it’s going to be.’ History is watching this vote.”
Rep. Justin Pearson, Memphis Democrat: “Memphis is the most beautiful place on the planet. It’s the place that raised me, my brothers, my parents, my grandmothers, and where my ancestors’ bones rest. And what you are doing today is eviscerating the only Black majority congressional district in our state because we are majority Black.”
Sen. Heidi Campbell, Nashville Democrat: “Look at the gallery, at the people who drove here from Memphis, from Chattanooga, from Knoxville, from Clarksville, from every corner of the state, to stand in these halls and to beg us not to do this. These aren’t partisans based from somewhere else. They’re not paid protesters. These are Tennesseans, teachers, farmers, veterans, grandmothers. They came here on a Thursday. They’ve been here all week because something about this is wrong enough to make them get in their cars.
“How do we look them in the eye and not recognize their humanity? You represent them too. Every single person in this gallery and in the halls is your constituent. Not just mine. Yours. Because the controlling party in a super majority has the most responsibility to these people, not the least.
“In the last presidential election, nearly 40% of Tennesseans did not vote for Donald Trump. That’s close to 1.2 million people. They pay taxes, they send their children to the same schools. They serve the same military. Under this map, the map this body may adopt, those 1.2 million people will have diminished representation, not reduced representation. Zero. No congressional voice at all….This is a map drawn by incumbents for incumbents in the service of one man in Washington who is not a Tennessean.”
In Georgia, the public backlash forced the legislature to back away for the moment from its redistricting plan. Redistricting maps produced in Tennessee and a number of other states were immediately challenged in court.
The attack on voting rights didn’t begin with the recent Supreme Court ruling, nor did the organizing to defend and expand democracy.
The effort to limit or destroy the ability of this country’s working class to vote crept along slowly at first, then picked up speed in the last few years, and with the beginning of Trump’s second term it’s moving at high speed.
According to the Brennan Center, “Over the last 20 years, states have erected barriers to the ballot box by imposing strict voter ID laws, cutting early voting times, restricting registration, and purging voter rolls too aggressively. These efforts received a boost when the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in 2013, and they’ve surged since the 2020 election. Such antidemocratic measures have kept significant numbers of eligible voters from the polls, especially among racial minorities, poor people, and young and old voters.”
Recent assaults on the vote at the federal level have included Trump’s attempt to have the Postal Service limit mail-in ballots, the SAVE Act now before Congress, and even FBI raids on organizations that help register voters.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1870, barred denying or abridging the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Nonetheless, Southern states and others used such methods as poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications, white primaries, legislative districting schemes, and violence to deny Black Americans the right to vote or to choose candidates of their choice for another century.
After decades of organized struggle for civil rights, the Voting Rights Act finally became law on August 6, 1965. It outlawed discriminatory barriers to voting like literacy tests and also imposed strict oversight upon states and districts with histories of voter discrimination. The new law had a positive impact very quickly. Black registration rates soon rose throughout the South, and Black officials were elected at the highest rates since Reconstruction. Section 4 of the Act required jurisdictions with the worst records of discrimination to obtain “preclearance” from the federal government before changing voting laws.
The 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder wiped out the preclearance provision in the law. The April 29 Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais essentially completed a decades-long effort to gut the Voting Rights Act by weakening Section 2, which provided that members of every racial group should have an equal opportunity to “elect representatives of their choice.”
Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent at Vox, said in a video made shortly before the Callais ruling was issued, “The stunning thing about the Voting Rights Act is just how fast it worked. On the day it was signed [in 1965], less than 7% of Black eligible voters in the state of Mississippi were registered to vote. Just two years later, that number was 60%.” Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill said in a televised interview after the Callais decision that, when the Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965, “there were only 72 Black elected officials in the entire United States. And then it [the law] started to do its work. So by 1980, we were up to about 1,500.”
Hannah-Jones concluded: “So we have to decide as Americans, are we going to have democracy or not? We’ve had a Congress that has refused to act” [to protect voting rights and democracy].
Protesters for voting rights expressed joy as they stood together, fighting as one people, the key to not only saving what remains of democracy, but pushing forward for a true democracy for all.
Bob Lee is a professional journalist, writer and editor, and is co-editor of the People’s Tribune, serving as Managing Editor. He first started writing for and distributing the People’s Tribune in 1980, and joined the editorial board in 1987.
