.KeishaBlain: Fannie Lou Hamer's question 'Is this America?' still resonates today
reports that 19 states passed 34 laws that restricted voting access in 2021 and is now tracking 250 bills that seek to restrict voting access in 27 states. But we don’t hear enough about how the 1965 legislation came to be or the effects it had in the United States. In Mississippi, for example, the number of African Americans registered to vote suddenlyIt’s hard to imagine there being a Voting Rights Act without Fannie Lou Hamer, a working-poor, disabled Black woman.
Hamer, who was in Atlantic City demanding that the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party she’d help establish be recognized as the state’s official delegation, gave an electrifying speech to the party’s credential committee that was seen by millions of television viewers. "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily?"
A major victory in the fight for Black voting rights, the Voting Rights Act has been under attack ever since and, especially since the Shelby ruling, a number of state and local laws have been passed to curtail the Black vote. These developments are a bitter reminder that the fight for voting rights is far from over.
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