Letters from an American - Awakening a Sleeping Giant

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

May 16, 2026May 17th is the anniversary of the Brown v Board of Education decision declaring racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, Three years later, President Eisenhower proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson wrestled the Act through Congress, But efforts to expand voter registration for Black Americans were stymied, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, On March 7. 1965 after the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson, marchers set out from Selma AL to the state capital at Montgomery to draw attention to the struggle, they were stopped by the government. The march was started again, and this time 25,000 people completed their trip, The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed on August 6, 1965, Yet the basic rights protected by the Act were gutted on April 29, 2026 by the Supreme Court, Thousands, including 18 members of Congress, traveled to Selma and Montgomery today, to call for action to protect voting rights, Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told an audience that those trying to gerrymander their way into controlling Congress have awakened a sleeping giant, as people come together knowing what it means to the country to protect the vote.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

May 16, 2026. 72 years ago tomorrow, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously decided Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That landmark decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional because segregated schools denied black children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Three years after the Brown v. Board decision, in the face of massive resistance to desegregation in the South, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to protect the right of Black Americans to vote,

using the federal government to overrule the state laws that limited voter registration and kept Black voters from the polls. To prevent the passage of the first federal civil rights legislation since 1875, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond launched the longest filibuster in U.S. history, speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey, broke Thurman's record on March 31st through April 1st, 2025, speaking for 25 hours, five minutes, and 59 seconds. But his speech was not a filibuster. Southern Democrats, known as Dixecrats, managed to weaken the measure, but Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat of Texas,

managed to wrestle the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress, and Black Americans and their white allies began trying to register Black Americans to vote. But the law proved too weak to force white registrars to allow black voters onto the roles, and by 1961, activists with the law, the student non-violating coordinating committee, or SNCC, pronounced SNCC, were at work in Mississippi to promote voter registration. In 1964, they launched the Freedom Summer, bringing college students from northern schools to work together with black people from Mississippi to educate and register black voters. Just as the project was getting underway, three organizers, James Cheney from Mississippi,

Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwarner from New York, disappeared outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. Lyndon Johnson, president by then, used the popular rage over the three missing voting rights workers to pressure Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, designed to try to hold back the white supremacists and to make it possible for black Americans to register to vote. The measure passed, and on July 2nd, Johnson signed it into law. On August 4th, investigators found the bodies of the three missing men. Ku Klux Klan members, working with local law enforcement officers, had murdered them, and then buried the bodies in an earthen dam that was under construction.

And still, white officials refused to accept the idea of black voting. In Selma, Alabama, where the city's voting rolls were 99% white, even though black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived there, local black organizers had launched a voter registration drive in 1963, but a judge stopped voter registration meetings by prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people. Selma Voting Rights activist Amelia Boynton invited the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the city to draw national attention to its struggle, and he and other prominent black leaders arrived in January 1965.

For seven weeks, black residents made a new push to register to vote. County Sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2,000 of them on a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a literacy test. Not a single person passed. Then, on February 18th, white police officers, including local police, sheriff's deputies and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed man, 26-year-old Jimmy Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown

of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson died eight days later on February 26th. Black leaders in Selma decided to diffuse the community's anger by planning a long march, 54 miles, from Selma to the state capital at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with Billy Cleggles. bullwhips and tear gas. They fractured the skull of young activist John Lewis and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop black voting.

On March 15th, President Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a National Voting Rights Act. Their cause must be our cause too, he said. All of us must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice, and we shall overcome. Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation. Under the protection of federal troops, the Selma marchers completed their trip to Montgomery on March 25th.

Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people. That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five, who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city. A bipartisan majority of Congress passed the Voting Rights Act by a vote of 77 to 19 in the Senate, and 333 to 85 in the House. Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6th. Recalling the outrage of Selma, Johnson said, this right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals control over their own destinies.

And yet, on April 29, 26, the Supreme Court gutted the protections for the Black majority districts Congress provided for in the Voting Rights Act after years of weakening the law in other ways. In its wake, Republican-dominated southern state legislatures are rushing to redraw their district lines to dilute the votes of black Democrats. Today, thousands of Americans, including 18 members of Congress, traveled to Selma and Montgomery to call Americans to action to protect voting rights. Pastor Kenneth Sharpton, Glasgow told Joseph D. Bryant of Alabama News site AL, this moment is bigger than Democrats or Republicans.

This is about democracy itself. This is about whether black communities, poor communities, rural communities, formerly incarcerated people, and marginalized voices will continue to have representation and political power in America. Speakers united around the theme that those trying to gerrymander their way into control of Congress in defiance of voters had reawakened a movement. They think they can draw us out of power, Representative Alexandria Ocasia Cortez, a Democrat of New York, told an audience in Montgomery. They do not know the sleeping giant that they just awakened because it is not a coincidence and our whole country must understand that it was not until voting rights were ratified in this country that we got the great society. because when black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded.

When voting rights are protected, health care gets expanded. When voting rights are protected, our country moves forward. And Montgomery, that's what they're actually afraid of. They're afraid of us coming together. They're afraid of us protecting one another.

Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead of Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.