Elijah Lewis: “the Voting Rights Act was good for America in 1965 and it is good and necessary in 2006. We must strengthen our resolve…”

“the Voting Rights Act was good for America in 1965 and it is good and necessary in 2006. We must strengthen our resolve and complete the job that we began almost a year ago in a bipartisan way and pass the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act tomorrow without amendment. The struggle for voting rights was not so long ago. It was not 75 or 100 years ago. It was 41 years ago that this Voting Rights Act was passed. This is not ancient history. Yet so many Members of the House are too young to remember our very dark history of segregation and voting discrimination. The history of the right to vote in America is a history of conflict, of violence, of struggle for the right to vote. Many people died trying to gain that right. I was beaten and jailed because I stood up for it. The experience of minorities today tell us that the struggle is not over, and that the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act are still necessary. We do not want to go back to our dark past, and we must not go back. Forty-one years ago it was almost impossible for people of color to register to vote in many parts of the American South, in Georgia, in Alabama, and in Mississippi. Forty-one years ago, the State of Mississippi had a black voting-age population of more than 450,000, and only about 16,000 blacks were registered to vote. Just 41 years ago, people of color had to pay a poll tax, pass a so- called literacy test in some States in the South.…”