Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy
The Supreme Court will soon consider Shelby County (AL) v. Holder, challenging the “pre-clearance” provision of the Voting Rights Act (which Congress extended for 25 years in 2006). For readers who don’t recall the era before the VRA’s hard-fought passage, in 1965, University of Delaware historian May offers an involving narrative of the law’s history and consequences. May’s prologue sketches African American voting rights from the Emancipation Proclamation to the early 1960s and spotlights national leaders (Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, Charles Evers, John Lewis, James Farmer, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) present when Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law. In the chapters that follow, however, he stresses the critical work of lesser-known activists, like Amelia and Sam Boynton, Bernard Lafayette, and James Forman, and the powerful impact they and their intransigent opponents, Sheriff Jim Clark and Alabama governor George Wallace, had on public and congressional attitudes. May then traces the bill’s dramatic legislative history, describes the results of its implementation, examines the issues in its four congressional reauthorizations, and outlines challenges it currently faces. An illuminating history of a law that remains all too relevant. --Mary Carroll