The Black Lives Matter Movement has most recently been in the news confronting 2016 presidential candidates about their political stances and on whether these candidates can understand what the phrase “Black Lives Matter” even means. The movement has been media-savvy so far.
However, to be a real movement worthy of the name, Black Lives Matter needs to focus on a significant issue affecting Black folks and get something done about that issue. To wit, 2015 is the 50-year anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, VRA, which, along with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was the signature accomplishment of the modern Civil Rights Movement. But that was victory in a battle, not the war. The latter has continued relentlessly since then, as more and more states have attempted legislation to limit and restrict the ability of African Americans and other ethnic minorities to vote, and their access to the ballot box.
With the Shelby County, Alabama, vs. Holder case in 2013, the Supreme Court effectively gutted major parts of the VRA and gave increased license and support to those state restriction attempts, and the VRA remains under siege.
There have been two recent and important beachheads in that war which have gone fairly unnoticed by the public: the June 2015 introduction of congressional legislation called the Voting Rights Advancement Act 2015, sponsored by Rep. John Lewis of Georgia in the House and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont in the Senate, and the recent federal court decision striking down the Texas law that severely restricted voting rights in that state (August 2015).
The Dallas Morning News reported that, “In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel ruled that the controversial and Republican-backed Texas law violated Section 2 of the landmark 1965 civil rights law.”
Black Lives Matter activists should get on this. They should agitate members of congress to pass the Voting Rights Advancement legislation, which revises the original VRA to fix what the Supreme Court invalidated in the Shelby County case. The BLM folks should agitate and educate around the federal court decision to further dissuade states from restricting Black and Latino voting access.
In order, to be taken seriously and to be counted as a real movement, Black Lives Matter activists need to actually win something significant for Black folk. The war over voting rights is not over, and Black people, and other Americans, need another big win on the battlefield.
Can Black Lives Matter come up to the challenge, or will the group waste its talent and momentum on merely confronting presidential candidates on subsidiary issues? Former President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in August 1965, as depicted in the movie, “Selma,” and since 1965, it has been reauthorized four times, including by Republican President George W. Bush in 2006, virtually always after being passed with overwhelming support from both houses of Congress. So it can be done.
Black Lives Matter, let’s make Black people’s voting lives keep making a difference!
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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