Voting is the ultimate freedom

Iwas fortunate to be one of only eight college students to ever study directly under the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a classroom. That intense experience at Morehouse College 60 years ago solidified a shared belief with King that actions are more powerful than words in ensuring civil rights.

As we mark King’s birthday this year, it is a remembrance unlike almost any other. It is a time for working deeds in celebration of his life and for mobilization to ensure the fulfillment of his dream. It is a time for Congress to take action to preserve the voting rights that King fought so hard to gain, not only for Black Americans, but for all Americans. Those rights are under attack in statehouses and courtrooms around our nation.

Emboldened by the Big Lie of our disgraced former president, state legislators across the country have enacted draconian voter restriction laws, not only in the Deep South, but in 19 states across the country. These laws will effectively prevent millions of voters from being able to have their ballots counted by reducing or eliminating early voting and voting by mail and adding onerous identification requirements.

Some state lawmakers have even proposed legislation that could potentially allow legitimate elections to be overturned. In this regressive environment, the most important action we can take as a nation is to stamp out those racist laws with the passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 and the Freedom to Vote Act. Both bills have been held up for months in the Senate, through the intransigence of Republicans and with the assistance of two supposed Democrats who, in this case, are opponents of the core democratic principle of the right to vote. As these vital bills remain bottled up, state lawmakers are becoming more emboldened to invent new

African Americans in Peachtree, Ala., line up to vote for the first time after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

ways to deny people the vote, as effectively as ever.

Make no mistake. These newly enacted voter restriction laws in a growing number of states are transparent efforts to disenfranchise voters of color. They are a blatant attack on the fundamental Constitutional rights of Americans meant to maintain the power structure created and sustained by systemic racism.

President Biden has called for an end to the filibuster, which is being used by opponents to prevent the Senate from even debating the bill. That would be a drastic step, one that some worry would create risks in the future should Republicans take back control of the

Senate. Yet in a political environment poisoned by the Big Lie and just a year after armed rioters invaded the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election, some kind of drastic action is needed. Because without these bills, we might see millions of voters permanently disenfranchised because of their race or ethnicity. Indeed, the situation today is reminiscent of 1957, when King chastised lawmakers who refused to act on voting rights as “men (who) so often have a high-blood pressure of words and an anemia of deeds.” Senators profess their dedication to the Constitution and the right to vote, yet they stand on the proverbial schoolhouse steps refusing to allow their fellow

citizens access to the ballot box.

King believed that the shortest path to freedom went through the polling booth. That path is being blocked, and words will not remove the barricade; only action will. And unless Congress acts, and does so with conviction, we will surely see elections decided not by the vote of the majority, but by the machinations of the minority, and the perpetuation of the systemic racism King devoted his life to eradicating.

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