John Malveaux of
sends this link:
August 8, 2015
Voting Rights - the President speaks live
The White House Blog [Excerpt]
Ed. note: This is cross-posted on Medium.
The right to vote is one of the most fundamental rights of any democracy.
Fifty years ago today, because of the sacrifice of countless men and women, that right was secured for more Americans.
On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights
Act into law — breaking down legal barriers at the state and local level
that had prevented African Americans and others from exercising their
constitutional right to vote.
Because of that law — one of our nation's most influential pieces of
legislation — Americans who were previously disenfranchised and left out
of the democratic process were finally able to cast a ballot. The law
was designed to ensure that all American citizens, regardless of the
color of their skin, had an equal opportunity to make their voices
heard.
But that law didn’t come to pass because folks suddenly decided it was the right thing to do.
This past March, I had the honor of traveling to Selma, Alabama for
the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march from Selma to
Montgomery. Those who marched over the course of those five days in 1965
were fighting to ensure that African Americans could exercise their
right to vote under the 15th Amendment of our Constitution. They were
marching in the face of a segregationist system that wanted to deny them
that right.
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