We are now well into the post-Voting Rights Act period, with ruthless attempts at racial gerrymandering unfolding across the South. The latest development came yesterday evening, when the Supreme Court deployed a twisted logic to effectively halt an Alabama election already in progress so state officials can hold it under a map that dilutes the Black vote.
Against that backdrop, we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss this TPM story, from about two weeks ago now, in which the families of civil rights activists who died in the months before and immediately after the passage of the Voting Rights Act talked to us about what the Supreme Court’s April ruling eviscerating it means to them. This kind of work is not always the splashiest political reporting, but we think it’s important. It’s the kind of thing your memberships make possible. So thank you.
As the son of Viola Liuzzo, who was shot dead by Klansmen while driving to Selma, tells us in the piece:
“My mother did not give her life. Her life was taken and it shocked the nation enough that they passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965,” he said, adding that the Supreme Court and Trump administration were “working tirelessly to go back to the ‘60s.”
“It’s disgusting,” he said.
