Honor John Lewis: Improve voting rights now
The death of John Lewis, civil rights icon and a member of Congress, is yet another sad moment in this summer of losses. His uncompromising belief that the United States could live up to its finest ideals remains with us as a legacy this nation should embrace. That’s especially true as the Black Lives Matter movement pushes the nation to reconsider its racist past.
Lewis will be eulogized in his hometown of Atlanta on Thursday, ending several days of deserved tribute to the man who risked his life to ensure the equality of his fellow citizens. With care because of the coronavirus pandemic, he was honored in his home state of Alabama, at the U.S. Capitol and in the state capitol of Georgia. Lewis is the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
Perhaps the most moving tribute of the past few days was the sight of Lewis’ coffin being escorted across the Edmund Pettus
Bridge in Selma, Ala. The bridge, named after a former Confederate Army officer, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon and lifelong white supremacist, was the site of Bloody Sunday in March 1965.
Police attacked and beat civil rights marchers advocating for the right to vote on their way to the state capital of Montgomery, a confrontation so ugly that it galvanized opinion against Southern apartheid. It led to the passage, just two months later, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Lewis nearly lost his life on that bridge. Instead, he turned his life into continuing to advocate for the dignity and worth of all humans. His last public photograph before his death earlier this month was in Washington, D.C., at Black Lives Matter Plaza.
There is a movement now to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge after John Lewis, and that would be a fine tribute. Ava DuVerney, who directed the film Selma, said this on Twitter: “Edmund Pettus Bridge should be the John Lewis Bridge. Named for a hero. Not a murderer.” The John Lewis Bridge Project website has more information about the campaign, as well as a place to sign a petition and support the effort.
More urgently, though, the U.S. Senate must take up the House-passed version of the latest Voting Rights Act, important legislation to restore portions of the act invalidated in 2013 by a misguided Supreme Court.
The court allowed the nine states that had been under federal oversight to change election laws without first seeking approval. The court stated that conditions had changed — it was no longer a given that new election laws would be crafted to suppress votes. That proved to be a misread of the current state of race relations in the United States.
Freed from scrutiny, states have passed overly strict voter ID laws that impact minority communities, reducing polling places and broadly purging voter rolls. There has been a consistent and successful effort to make it harder to vote — and it will take strong federal protections to ensure all who are eligible to vote can do so.
This week, the House agreed to rename its voting rights legislation in honor of John Lewis at the suggestion of Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act must be debated in the Senate, passed and sent to the president to be signed into law. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take it up, calling voter-suppression claims “nonsense.”
Still, even McConnell has paid tribute to Lewis, eulogizing him at the Capitol, “thanking God that he gave our nation this hero it needed so badly. May all of us that he will leave behind under this dome pray for a fraction of John’s strength to keep bending that arc on toward justice.” Powerful words, a fitting tribute, but an empty one, unless and until it is matched by moving the arc to ensure the right to vote — a right John Lewis spent his life protecting.