Consider This from NPR - John Lewis Fought For Voting Rights His Entire Life. Why His Work Is Still Unfinished

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

John Lewis, the civil rights icon and late congressman from Georgia who represented Atlanta for more than three decades, spent his life fighting for equal voting rights in America. Myrna Perez, Director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, explains why his work remains unfinished. Lewis spoke to 'Fresh Air' in 2009. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.Find and support your local public radio station.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Brother John Lewis. August, 1963. 23-year-old John Lewis is standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall. I appeal to all of you to get in this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and helmet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete. John Lewis was one of the organizers of the March march through the South, through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Danville, through the streets of Cambridge,

through the streets of Birmingham. That same crowd was about to hear Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech. John Lewis talked about what he would talk about a lot for the rest of his life. One man, one vote. It is an ethical crime. It is our tool. It must be ours. One man, one vote. It is an effort to cry. It is our truth. It must be ours.

One man, one vote must be our cry. 45 years later, on the other end of the mall at the Capitol. Are you prepared to take the oath, Senator? I am. Congressman John Lewis watched Barack Obama take the oath of office. I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear. Later, after the ceremony, John Lewis would hand the new president a piece of paper. He asked him to sign it. Because of you, John, the president wrote. So help you God? So help me God. Congratulations, Mr. President.

For John Lewis, the cause of his life was the right to vote. And that cause, of course, did not end with the election of the first black president. Mr. Speaker, voting rights are under attack in America. A few years into Obama's first term, this was John Lewis on the floor of the House. There's a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, minority and low-income voters for exercising their constitutional right to engage in a democratic process. Today, not far from where he said that, the body of John Lewis is lying in state. Coming up, why his work to protect the right to vote is still not finished.

This is Consider This from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Tuesday, July 28th. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Integrative Therapeutics, creator of Physician's Elemental Diet, a medical food developed by clinicians for the dietary management of IBS, IBD, and SIBO under the supervision of a physician. In 1965, in Selma, Alabama, you could only register to vote on the first and third Mondays of each month. And to do that, you had to go to the courthouse and get a copy of this thing called a literacy test.

And people are stood in line day in and day out, failing to get a copy of the test or failing to pass the test. This is John Lewis talking to Terry Gross in 2009. And he said these so-called literacy tests were one of the many ways that states made it basically impossible for people of color to vote. Lewis later said Black people were required to count the number of bubbles on a bar of soap for the number of jelly beans in a jar. So in 1965, voting rights advocates in Alabama protested, and state troopers responded with force. So after several hundred people had been arrested and people had been beaten and one young man had been shot and killed, we decided to march. And on Sunday afternoon, March 7th, about 600 of us left a little church called Brown Chapel AME

Church and started walking in an orderly, peaceful, nonviolent fashion through the streets of Selma. Through the streets of Selma and onto a bridge that crosses the Alabama River. We were walking in twos, no one saying a word. A bridge that still, today, has a big sign with the name of a Confederate general and former Grand Dragon of the KKK.

We came to the highest point on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Down below we saw a sea of blue, Alabama State Troopers. And we kept walking, and we came within hearing distance of the State Troopers. And a man identified himself and said, Our Major John Cloud of the Alabama State Troopers. This is an unlawful march. It would not be allowed to continue. I give you three minutes to disperse and return to your church. In less than a minute and a half, the major said, Troopers, advance.

And you saw these men putting on their gas masks. They came toward us, beating us with bull whips, nightsticks, driving us with horses, and releasing the tear gas. I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick. I thought I saw death. I thought I was going to die. I had a concussion there at the bridge, and almost 44 years later, I don't recall how I made it back across that bridge through the streets of Selma. But I do recall being back at the church that Sunday afternoon. The church is full to capacity, more than 2,000 people on the outside. And someone said

to me, John said something to the audience, speak to them. And I stood up and said something like, I don't understand it, how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam, but can I send troops to Selma, Alabama to protect people who only desire to register to vote? What happened that day in Selma was covered on national TV. People were horrified. Eight days later, Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States. President Lyndon Johnson spoke to a joint session of Congress. I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. And introduced the Voting Rights Act. At times, history and fate meet at a single time,

in a single place, to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. When the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965, it banned barriers like literacy tests that could be used to discriminate against black voters. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin.

In the decades that followed, protections in the Voting Rights Act were expanded again and again. But more recently, new barriers have been appearing. States are cutting back polling places, a lot of times in places where people of color cast their votes. Many places have poorly maintained voting equipment that breaks down, meaning people have to wait even longer to vote. There are ID requirements that disproportionately affect people of color. These requirements are supposed to protect against fraud, but there never has been evidence of widespread voter fraud. None anywhere in the United States.

And all of that was happening before the pandemic. Some of those states that made it more difficult to vote in the past are now resisting efforts to expand early voting and mail-in voting. The bottom line, the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. It's not doing its job anymore. Well, the Voting Rights Act still exists, but it's missing its heart. That's Myrna Perez, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She talked to my colleague, Elsa Chang. I guess I just want to start at the beginning in 1965. Can you just explain what the Voting Rights Act specifically did when it passed?

How significant of a game changer was it at the time? The Voting Rights Act was a complete game changer for electoral participation in this country. It banned literacy tests. It set forth a nationwide ability to challenge in court discriminatory voting practices. And importantly, it set up an administrative process that we call preclearance. Right, preclearance. Now that is basically this requirement that states that had a history of discriminatory voting laws were required under the Voting Rights Act to get approval from the federal government before those states could change any voting rules. At least that was the requirement until the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. Tell us what that Supreme Court decision did.

The Shelby County decision gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act by mothballing preclearance. The Shelby County decision made it such that those jurisdictions, which were localities and states, that had to abide by the rules of preclearance, no longer had to do so. So we had preclearance on the books, but it wasn't operating anywhere. And as such, people like me who do civil rights litigation on behalf of voters around the country, we have fewer tools available to protect voters. That means the litigation takes longer, it's more expensive, and some wrongs go unchallenged because of the resources that become involved in litigating on a one-by-one basis. We also see problems of gamesmanship, where we'll go and successfully

strike down a law in the courts, and then they'll make a little tweak, and then we're stuck back in court again. This was all stuff that the preclearance provision took care of, because it changed who had the burden of proof in showing that an election change wasn't going to make minority voters worse off. Now, in 2013, the Supreme Court did leave a door open for Congress to step in and try to fix this loophole that you're now describing in the Voting Rights Act. Where did those efforts go in Congress? Well, the House passed a new and restored Voting Rights Act, and it was recently reintroduced in the Senate. But it's going to take a lot of pressure from the public to tell Congress that we're serious. We want a new and restored Voting Rights Act.

I want to play for you one last cut of tape from Congressman Lewis. This is from 2018. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, some people had to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap, the number of jelly beans in a jar. And all across America today, when people go out to attempt to vote, they stand in long, immovable lines. That's not right. It's not fair. And it's not just. We can do better and we must do better. Do you think that John Lewis's death might lead to a renewed push to examine who gets to vote in this country? I certainly hope so. His life's work was about making sure that this country honored its promise that when people stepped into the ballot box,

they would be free from racial discrimination in voting. And his life's work will be undone if we don't act quickly, because there are forces in this country that want to make it such that some people can participate and some people can't. Mirna Perez, director of the Voting Rights and Elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, talking to my colleague Elsa Chang. By the way, that new version of the Voting Rights Act she was talking about, the House passed it last December. On this vote, the yeas are 228, the nays are 187. John Lewis presided over the vote that day.

The bill is passed without objection. But since then, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to bring it up for a vote in the Senate. This week, the House voted to rename the bill the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. Additional reporting in this episode from our colleagues at All Things Considered. For more news, download the NPR One app or listen to your local public radio station. Supporting that station is what makes this podcast possible. So thank you. I'm Kelly McEvers. We will be back with more tomorrow. How do you maintain a friendship

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