Issue #907 Today In Black History, Monday, August 11, 2025
My paternal grandparents did not leave Fort Smith, Arkansas, during the Great Migration of the early and mid-20th century, but most of their surviving thirteen children did leave and established new lives and families elsewhere in the U.S.
My father was the 12th of the thirteen children. Effective medical care was almost non-existent in that place at that time. Two of his older sisters died of TB in the mid-1930s when he was a teenager. One sister contracted the disease and gave it to the other sister, who left behind a three-year-old daughter. My father was also an identical twin, but when they were four years old, his brother died of gangrene after stepping on a nail while they were playing outside barefoot. The ambulance refused to take the young boy to the hospital.
My maternal grandparents did leave Eufaula, Alabama, in the early 1900s and moved to East Chicago, Indiana, because my grandfather secured employment in the nearby steel mills.
My mother was the second of three daughters, but in 1934, her older sister died at age thirteen after suffering a mild concussion in gym class. The white hospital in East Chicago would not admit her, and before my grandparents could drive to the Black hospital in Chicago, about thirty miles away, she died.
My parents met in the mid-1940s in the biology lab at St. Louis University. They planned to live in St. Louis after they married in 1949, but my father could not get a job in that city because of racism. They moved to Detroit soon after they married because my father was hired by the Detroit Health Department. He stayed with the Health Department until he retired more than thirty-five years later, and my three younger sisters and I were born and raised in Detroit.
I tell this quick history of my family and racism to emphasize how important the 1965 Voting Rights Act was during the Civil Rights Movement. My paternal grandparents and maternal grandfather died in the 1950s, before they could legally and easily vote for people who would not have allowed them to experience the racism they did, which resulted in the deaths of their children.
My maternal grandmother died in August 1965, just a few months before the passing of the Voting Rights Act, but she was very active in local politics in her adopted home of Detroit for ten years from 1955 through 1965. She dragged five-year-old me with her as she went from house to house to house registering people to vote in the 1950s.
My father allowed me, as a ten-year-old, to “vote” for Senator John F. Kennedy for president in 1960 by letting me “pull the lever” that opened the privacy curtain on the voting booth and registered his votes.
My father and I marched with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Detroit in June 1963 during the first “March for Jobs and Justice.”
I remember watching on TV as President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in August 1963, just as I remember watching the Civil Rights Movement on TV in the 1950s and 1960s.
Before the VRA, African Americans and other minority groups, especially in the Southern states, faced numerous obstacles when attempting to exercise their right to vote. These included literacy tests, poll taxes, and other discriminatory practices often supported by local laws and enforcement.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s brought significant attention to these injustices. Events such as the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 highlighted the violent opposition faced by Black Americans seeking to register to vote. These events garnered national attention and increased pressure on the federal government to act.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law on August 6, 1965. The law aimed to remove barriers to voting for all citizens, particularly those affecting African Americans. It prohibited any voting practice or procedure that discriminated on the basis of race or color and included special provisions for jurisdictions with significant histories of discrimination.
My grandparents were unable to exercise their right to vote, both in the South and in the North, before they died.
The necessity of the VRA arose from the pervasive and systemic disenfranchisement of minority voters, primarily in the Southern states, but also in other parts of the country. By enforcing the 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, the VRA sought to ensure that no citizen would be denied the right to vote due to race or color. Key provisions included:
* Section 2: Prohibited nationwide voting discrimination.
* Section 5: Required jurisdictions with significant histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before making changes to voting laws or practices (preclearance).
* Section 4(b): Contained the formula used to identify which jurisdictions would be subject to Section 5 preclearance.
Conservatives have attempted to suppress the votes of Black people, women, and other non-white United States citizens since the passage of the 15th Amendment, primarily by calling for “states’ rights.” Over the decades since 1965, the VRA has faced multiple legal challenges, leading to significant changes in its enforcement:
* Shelby County v. Holder (2013): The Supreme Court invalidated the coverage formula in Section 4(b), which effectively nullified the preclearance requirement of Section 5. This decision led to a wave of new voting laws in several states, some of which were criticized for potentially suppressing minority votes.
* Ongoing Debates: The ruling in Shelby County v. Holder sparked ongoing debates on voting rights and led to calls for Congress to modernize the VRA to restore its full protections.
In response to the Supreme Court's decision, there have been efforts to pass new legislation to restore and update the VRA. Notably, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act seeks to modernize the preclearance formula and strengthen voting rights protections, but as of 2025, it has yet to be passed into law.
Meanwhile, Republicans at the state and national levels continue to work hard to suppress the votes and dilute the representation for Black and brown voters throughout the country.
The VRA's current framework, post-Shelby, has led to increased scrutiny of state-level voting laws. Critics argue that some of these laws disproportionately affect minority voters, while supporters claim they are necessary to prevent voter fraud, which is actually practically non-existent.
Today In Black History
* In 1960, the African nation of Chad gained its independence from France.
* In 1965, an 11-day insurrection started in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
* In 1965, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Thurgood Marshall as United States solicitor general.
* In 1982, Lt. General Roscoe Robinson, Jr. became the second Black Four-Star General in U.S. history.
* In 1992, Black inventor Anthony Phills received a U.S. patent for a ruler template for the computer keyboard.
* In 2020, Democratic Presidential candidate former Senator Joe Biden selected Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his running mate. Senator Harris is the first woman of color selected by a major political party.
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