Post by freespiritmuse on Jul 6, 2013 21:40:18 GMT -5
A New Strategy for Voting Rights
Activists are already moving ‘from outrage to action’ in fighting the Supreme Court’s awful VRA decision.
Hank Sanders grew up in segregated, rural southern Alabama and in 1971 moved to Selma—the birthplace of the Voting Rights Act. Before the VRA, only 393 of the 15,000 black voting-age residents in Dallas County, where Selma is located, were registered to vote. Less than a year later, after federal registrars arrived in August 1965, more than 10,000 black voters had been added to the rolls. Sanders experienced firsthand how the VRA transformed Selma and the rest of the country. In 1983, he became the first African-American state senator from the Alabama Black Belt since Reconstruction, representing a new majority-black district created by the VRA.
Read more: A New Strategy for Voting Rights | The Nation www.thenation.com/article/175090/new-strategy-voting-rights#ixzz2YK7rOKnL
Activists are already moving ‘from outrage to action’ in fighting the Supreme Court’s awful VRA decision.
Hank Sanders grew up in segregated, rural southern Alabama and in 1971 moved to Selma—the birthplace of the Voting Rights Act. Before the VRA, only 393 of the 15,000 black voting-age residents in Dallas County, where Selma is located, were registered to vote. Less than a year later, after federal registrars arrived in August 1965, more than 10,000 black voters had been added to the rolls. Sanders experienced firsthand how the VRA transformed Selma and the rest of the country. In 1983, he became the first African-American state senator from the Alabama Black Belt since Reconstruction, representing a new majority-black district created by the VRA.
Read more: A New Strategy for Voting Rights | The Nation www.thenation.com/article/175090/new-strategy-voting-rights#ixzz2YK7rOKnL