Voting Rights Anniversary — By Dr. Elwood Watson, PhD

By Dr. Elwood Watson, PhD —

August 6, 2025 marked the 60th anniversary of the ratification of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – one of the most consequential laws in the nation’s history. Signed after the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, the act augmented the 15th Amendment’s promise that no American could be prohibited access to the ballot box because of their race. The results were indisputable. Towns and counties where Black voter registration had previously been less than 10% witnessed registrations surge. Black citizens who had long been denied access to participation in the political process acquired representation on school boards and in town halls, state legislatures, and Congress. The Voting Rights Act provided solid evidence that when the federal government enforces equality, diversity, and inclusion, democracy becomes stronger.

Over the next several decades, the act was extended and expanded. Then, however, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court struck down a section of the act as unconstitutional because it violated states’ power to implement and control elections. The court ruled that the section was outdated and not responsive to current conditions. The decision had an immediate effect and led to states employing strict photo ID laws and voter roll purges. Questions about the Voting Rights Act’s constitutionality have simmered underneath the surface at the Supreme Court. However, last month, in an order expanding a Louisiana redistricting case, the court decided to revisit the issue.

With arguments scheduled to take place on Oct. 15, there is considerable concern that what remains of the 1965 law after its brutal evisceration in the Shelby County case will be dramatically weakened, if not legally revoked in its entirety, by the conclusion of the court’s next term. The questions that a number of people are asking are as follows: How did things get to this point? How might a law adopted to nullify racial discrimination in electoral opportunity, a major civil rights era milestone, die 60 years later to the argument in certain influential political quarters that it is a vehicle of racial discrimination?

At the center of this drama is Donald Trump – an individual whose reputation as president is marred by rampant voter disenfranchisement, who perceives voting as virtually a popularity contest and is terrified of being defeated. This was why he challenged the integrity of our democratic mechanisms in 2020 after being defeated by Joe Biden instead of maturely conceding that several million more Americans voted for the latter.

Trump’s ruthless efforts against voting rights soldiers on as he steadily populates the courts with right-wing judges who continue to avidly and aggressively chip away at civil rights laws. Increased barriers to voting and the alarmingly minimal level of resistance from those still able to exercise their right to cast a ballot has perversely inspired and empowered him to run roughshod over media conglomerates and whip them into complacency as well as prompt corporations to abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Unbounded by any resistance from his own party and, regrettably, a sizable segment of feckless democratic leaders, Trump has unleashed a full political blitzkrieg on the civil rights movement’s storied legacy – going so far as to open files on Dr Martin Luther King Jr in an effort to distract attention from his own political problems.

The memories of March 7, 1965, are indelibly seared into the history books. It was a time when the horrific violence unleashed on marchers rattled the nation. Images of a young John Lewis and dozens of peaceful protesters getting their heads cracked open and their organs damaged by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge spread across the nation. That was the price Lewis and his peers paid for attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and to march. They were marching for the basic right inherent to any democratic form of government: the right to vote freely and without suppression. The sadistic scenes of bodily carnage became known as Bloody Sunday.

Later that evening, several television networks interrupted their regularly scheduled programming to inform the public of the bloodbath that had occurred earlier that day in Selma, Alabama. Interestingly, The ABC Sunday Night Movie that week was Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Talk about irony! Public outrage was immediate, and educational foundations, religious organizations, politicians, and private citizens from all walks of life flooded the White House with phone calls, letters, and telegrams urging and, in many cases, demanding that Congress move to ensure that American “Negroes” (the term commonly used in 1965) would not be politically disenfranchised. One week later, on March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of congress urging passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Intense public pressure culminated in Congress passing the act and President Johnson signing it into law on August 6, 1965. Had it not been for civil rights champions like Lewis, it would have taken much longer for Blacks, particularly in the South, to gain protections for their voting rights. More than 60 years later, the national outrage of Bloody Sunday, which sparked mobilization toward passage of the Voting Rights Act, has been replaced by a numbness to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, the arrests of elected officials, and the snipping of social safety nets.

This is why the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act is of such enormous importance. The anniversary should be remembered not just for nostalgic reasons, but for the act’s future implications. Will the legal promise of equal representation be retained? Will disingenuous legal theories perversely designed as “color blindness” arise? Will sinister and draconian legislation sharply diminish protections that generations of Americans of all races and ethnicities marched, bled, and died for to secure? The first several months of the new presidential administration demonstrated that this nation is far from achieving color blindness. Additionally, there is not that much of a difference between being color blind and simply blind.

The stakes could not be higher. Will the nation continue to honor the hard-won protections of the Voting Rights Act or allow them to be erased under the guise of “constitutional purity” – meaning White supremacy.

Source: The Black Commentator

Dr. Elwood Watson, Historian, public speaker, and cultural critic is a professor at East Tennessee State University and author of the recent book, Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America (University of Chicago Press), which is available in paperback and on Kindle via Amazon and other major book retailers.

Featured image: President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr., at the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Wikimedia Commons)