By no means did the fight for equality end in 1965 with the march from Selma, Alabama and the Voting Rights Act. Forty-seven years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s walk and the landmark Supreme Court decision, the threat of a Black president seems to be the catalyst behind the new exclusionary voting laws. Since the 2008 election, 34 states have proposed government I.D. laws, requiring voters to have some form of federal or state I.D. in order to vote, and other states have even stricter laws for suspected immigrants. To eradicate the red tape, several political leaders plan to reenact the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.
If the I.D. law passes, it would weigh against African-American voting power. Representative Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin) pointed to this out by using her state as an example. “President Obama won our state by 418,000 votes,” said Moore, “The new voter I.D. law in Wisconsin will disenfranchise 475,000 people. So it will guarantee that Barack Obama cannot be re-elected in Wisconsin if this law is not enjoined by the court.” Scheduled for the first week in March, Rev. Al Sharpton put the call to action out on Thursday. “Rather than convene after November’s election, talking about what it did to us, we are hitting the road now to prevent it from happening, and in those states that have already enacted it, to try to turn it around,” said Sharpton.
Will reenacting the march have the same affect it did 47 years ago? How likely does it seem like these I.D. laws will get passed?
