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John Lewis: How We Won, and Are Losing, the Right to Vote

John Lewis The Washington Post
John Lewis  is a congressman from Georgia. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was a leader of the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965 and is the last surviving speaker from the historic March on Washington. This is his review of the new book, Give Us the Ballot, The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America By Ari Berman; Farrar Straus and Giroux. 372 pp. $28

Remembering my time at the 1963 March on Washington

Clancy Sigal The Guardian
Everyone who marched has their own special memory. Although the event comes down to us mainly as the Rev Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech to the huge throng standing in the sweltering heat or sprawled cooling their toes in the Mall's reflecting pool, I remember it as one big picnic with everyone in their Sunday best and on their best manners firmly clasping hands in King's "beloved community". But it wasn't all kumbaya.

Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Herbert Marcuse, Joseph Weydemeyer, Karl Marx, Frederick Douglass, Jim Crow, the New Jim Crow, and the New New Jim Crow:Shelby County v. Holder

Mark S. Mishler Portside
Ginsburg attacks the ahistorical character of the majority decision. Quoting Shakespeare, she notes that the majority "ignores that `what's past is prologue'". What a profound observation, `the past is prologue'. It neatly, and with a literary flourish, sums up the deep defect with the Court's decision, its deliberate ignoring of both the contemporary ramifications of historical racism in this country as well as its current vitality.

What Dr. King didn't Say - Misremembering the March on Washington

Moshe Z. Marvit Washington Monthly. July/August 2013 issue
The March on Washington grew out of a clear understanding of the problems facing African Americans, and presented a discrete list of demands, including a comprehensive and effective civil rights law that would guarantee access to public accommodations, "decent housing, adequate and integrated education, and the right to vote." Also a "massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers - Negro and white - on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages"

"A Racial Entitlement" - The Right to Vote

Benjamin Jealous; Joan Walsh
"It no longer surprises me when extremist state legislators try to restrict our voting rights. I don't like it and we fight against it, but I'm no longer surprised by it." "What surprises and outrages me is that yesterday a Supreme Court Justice said that the protection of the right to vote is a 'perpetuation of racial entitlement.'" Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO, NAACP
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