Reply #23: MI: Chicken Littles and voting rights

[rumpel]

Metrotimes

The notion that the Voting Rights Act was imperiled has been swirling around for years.
by Keith A. Owens
7/26/2006
Sometimes people forget.

When President Lyndon Johnson won passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it was because it had become painfully obvious by then that black Americans, particularly black Americans in the South, didn't stand a chance of being afforded the most basic and elemental American right — the right to vote — without heavy-handed assistance from the highest levels of government. Johnson, who had grown up dirt-poor in the Texas hill country, was good at being heavy-handed. Given his background it isn't exactly shocking that he had some racist attitudes of his own to wrestle with and overcome. But as someone who never forgot what poverty and degradation could do to a human being, he was probably better equipped than any president since to recognize what those ills could do to the nation.

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=9466