Viewpoints: Invoking King's legacy without exhausting it
By Robin Givhan / The Washington Post
The president traveled Tuesday to Atlanta to deliver a speech on the sanctity of voting rights; a geographic choice that speaks to the reality that nothing about this democracy is assured. Nothing is certain.
Georgia gave Democrats the edge in the Senate and it was critical in helping Joe Biden win the presidency. It is also the state where election officials have been under extended duress as Republicans demanded recounts, alleged fraud and passed new laws that made voting more of an obstacle course than a walk in the park.
Biden’s visit included a stop at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a ceremonial laying of a wreath at the crypt of King and his wife Coretta Scott King, private time with their family and a visit to the historical Ebenezer Baptist Church where King was once senior pastor. Biden also spoke from the Atlanta University Center Consortium, an institute that straddles Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College, from which King graduated.
On a day trip that only had the president on the ground for a few hours, there was an awful lot of MLK.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/viewpoints-invoking-kings-legacy-without-exhausting-it/
Honor King by passing voting rights legislation
By Jeanne Crevier / For The Herald
Voting rights for all has been the central concern of the League of Women Voters since its founding in 1920.
The League supports passage by the U.S. Senate of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which have already passed in the House of Representatives. We applaud the statement of the King family that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be marked by passage of these bills as the best possible way to honor the Rev. Dr. King’s memory and advance democracy in the United States. Both pieces of legislation are essential to ensuring that all eligible citizens can exercise their right to vote in the United States.
Since its beginning in 1776, our country has experienced a gradual expansion of voting rights, initially only for white males with property to the current constitutionally protected right of all citizens over the age of 18. As each new group gained rights there were efforts to block the actual exercise of those rights, especially in the South, where numerous restrictive laws were enacted starting in the 1890s.
The last successful expansion of rights occurred with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Martin Luther King Jr., fought for. This act prohibited racial discrimination in voting laws and practices, and it required that changes to laws in states that historically discriminated be submitted to Congress for review at the federal level. In 2013 the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, ruled that this requirement was unconstitutional, thus striking a blow to voting rights.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-honor-king-by-passing-voting-rights-legislation/
