40th Anniversary of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” Highlights Gains and Gaps in Voting Rights

Washington, DC – Forty years ago this Sunday (March 6th), the ABC television network interrupted its premier of Judgment at Nuremberg, a film about Nazi racism, to broadcast breaking news from Selma, Alabama. In living rooms across the country, families were horrified as they watched police club and beat peaceful civil rights marchers who were calling for the voting rights of African Americans. What became known as “Bloody Sunday” together with all the other bombings, billy-clubings, and unbridled belligerence against peaceful marchers, led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), hailed by many as the nation’s most effective civil rights law.

“Our country has made a lot of progress in 40 years but we are far from finished,” said LCCR Executive Director Wade Henderson. “All we need to do is look at the elections of 2000 and 2004 to see that VRA violations are still a persistent feature of our political landscape. Many Americans are still disenfranchised by discriminatory redistricting plans, voter intimidation tactics, and purposely inaccessible polling stations.”

To mark the anniversary, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, (LCCR), the nation’s oldest, largest and most diverse civil and human rights coalition, has launched www.RenewTheVRA.org, a website devoted to the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which expires in 2007. The website provides background on the history of the VRA, an interactive map of states affected by reauthorization and state-by-state personal accounts that illustrate the continuing importance of the VRA. The new website and the attached edit memo provide specific examples of recent VRA violations.

The VRA put an end to literacy tests, poll taxes and other purposefully prejudiced methods of preventing African Americans from having their voices heard on Election Day. The right to bilingual election materials has been established in minority communities across the country. And the end of deliberately discriminatory at-large elections, as well as the creation of majority minority legislative districts, has created opportunities for minorities to elect candidates to thousands of federal, state and local offices.

“The most egregious and overt forms of discrimination are no longer visible, but our country has yet to achieve the constitutional goal of equality of political opportunity. The ideal of “one person, one vote,” is still just that – an ideal. This Sunday is the anniversary of a shameful day in American history but it also reminds us how far we have come and how far we have yet to go.”

“Reauthorizing the VRA and fighting to enforce it is critical,” said Henderson. “Protecting every American’s right to vote is the surest way guarantee progress.”