As the Voting Rights Act of 1965 turned 60 on Aug. 6, many activists are examining what the landmark legislation means for voters today.
While the bill faces attacks from the Trump administration, a conservative U.S. Supreme Court, and state legislators, and as Washingtonians still fight for statehood and full representation in Congress, modern freedom fighters are determined to prevent the clock from turning back on the right for all Americans to to fully participate in the political system.
“Sixty years ago, a courageous U.S. Congress took steps to enfranchise Black voters in the passage of the Voting Rights Act,” Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee and a political commentator, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 4. “Today, this historic law has allowed millions of citizens to vote as well as run for public office. Remember, we fought for this right to exist. Speak up!”
Brazile and other political experts and justice advocates are fighting against voter suppression happening throughout the U.S.
Democratic state legislators in Texas have left the state to prevent the Republican-led legislature from passing a congressional map in the middle of the decade, which would redraw five seats occupied by Black or Brown representatives and would effectively become GOP districts.
Plus, the Supreme Court agreed recently to look at a case in Louisiana in which the state’s legislature created a second minority-majority congressional district, questioning whether it was constitutional to do so using race as the sole criteria for creating the new seat.
The redistricting situations are complemented by the work of proponents of Project 2025, the 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” proffered by the conservative, Pro-Trump Heritage Foundation, calling for making simple mistakes in the voting process criminal offenses, giving the federal government access to state voter rolls and marginalizing the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which enforces voting laws.
Michael K. Fauntroy, an associate professor of policy and government and the founding director of Race, Politics, and Policy Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, told The Informer that with Project 2025, the political progress African Americans have made under the Voting Rights Act is in jeopardy.
“A major part of my research is voting rights,” said Fauntroy. “It saddens me how far we have fallen.”
However, for Americans living in the nation’s capital, the long fight for voters to have full representation still continues. Locally, many activists note the voting rights conversation starts with D.C. statehood.
“D.C. statehood should be the first issue,” D.C. Shadow Representative Oye Owolewa (D) told The Informer. “National issues that take place impact D.C. residents and we should have a vote on those matters.”
History of the Voting Rights Act
Although the first U.S. election was held in 1788, racism has historically prevented African Americans from being able to vote for local and federal leaders.
The U.S. Congress passed the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote will not be denied based on race on February 26, 1869, and it was ratified (by the states) on February 3, 1870. Functionally, the amendment gave Black men— the overwhelming majority of whom were former slaves— the right to vote.
The years following the 15th Amendment’s ratification produced Black men voting in large numbers and holding political offices in southern states on the local, county, state and federal levels. However, when the federal troops left the South in 1877 because of the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as president, thereby ending Reconstruction, white Southerners took power systematically for the next seven decades and enacted measures to discourage Black political participation.
Black elected officials— or even leaders concerned about the welfare of communities of color— were a rarity in the South because African Americans were denied access to voting through poll taxes, literacy tests and outright intimidation and violence.
In the 1950s, the civil rights movement started pressuring Congress to protect the voting rights of racial minorities. But it was the violence that took place in Selma, Alabama in 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that spurred a federal response to voting rights.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law on Aug. 6. In his remarks, Johnson expressed his hope that Blacks will use the law to get politically active and improve their status.
“So, let me now say to every Negro in this country: you must register,” the former president said. “You must vote. You must learn, so your choice advances your interest and the interest of our beloved nation. Your future, and your children’s future, depend upon it, and I don’t believe that you are going to let them down.”
The Fruits of the Voting Rights Act
After Johnson signed the legislation, millions of African Americans in the South registered to vote. Due to the exponential increase in the Black vote, Black elected officials ballooned from three state legislators in the former Confederate states in 1965 to 176 in 1985.
Nationally, Black elected officials increased from 1,469 in 1970 to 4,912 in 1980. By 2011, there were about 10,500 African Americans in elected office throughout the nation.
The Voting Rights Act was renewed in 1970 with the signature of Republican President Richard M. Nixon. Republican Presidents Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush signed renewals of the legislation in 1975, 1982, 1992 and 2006, respectively.
“Today, we renew a bill that helped bring a community on the margins into the life of American democracy,” said George W. Bush on July 26, 2006. “This legislation is named in honor of three heroes of American history who devoted their lives to the struggle of civil rights: Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King. And in honor of their memory and their contributions to the cause of freedom, I am proud to sign the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006.”
Attempts to Water Down Voting Rights Act, Efforts to Bolster Legislation
Seven years after George W. Bush signed the final extension of the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the law in the Shelby vs. Holder case.
The decision nixed the requirement for states or parts of states, with histories of racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal approval for new voting policies—a process known as preclearance. Since the Shelby case, states all over the country have enacted over 100 laws restricting voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice in 2023.
To bring the Voting Rights Act back to its original intent, Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) have introduced for the second time the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late Georgia congressman who was bloodied by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Alabama), a Selma native, introduced the John Lewis bill earlier this year in her chamber. NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said the passage of the John Lewis bill is crucial to the voting rights of Americans.
“Sixty years ago, our nation took the bold step toward justice by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” said Derrick Johnson. “Today that progress is under siege. We applaud and fully support Senators Durbin and Warnock’s introduction of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to help protect the sacred right to vote. Congress must work to pass this bill. The integrity of our democracy and the voice of every voter are at stake.”
Maya Wiley, the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights endorsed the John Lewis bill, saying “extremists who prefer a white, Christian and male-controlled country don’t mind destroying our rights to see a return to the days when Black people, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans could be blocked from the ballot but told it’s not due to racism.”
“And as we look toward the 2026 midterms, we face a Trump administration openly threatening to disenfranchise tens of millions based on lies about who is voting,” Wiley, 61, said. “Those in power see the rise of a multiracial democracy as a threat, and they are doing everything they can to silence it. But we won’t be silenced. We will not be threatened into submission.”
A Local Fight Against Voter Suppression
In addition to the John Lewis bill, Wiley also has a “package of laws,” including: the “D.C. statehood bill,” the Freedom to Vote Act and the Native American Voting Rights Act, which she believes Congress should pass to guarantee all Americans have their full voting rights.
“We will keep rising up and speaking out for the fundamental right to decide who represents us and what they do with our power,” Wiley declared.
D.C. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) is well aware of the 60th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and its intersection with the struggle for D.C. statehood. She notes that the attacks on voting rights of citizens nationwide are taking place as the District this year weathered its “own form of voter suppression.”
“After everything the District went through this year, it only underscores the need for D.C. to continue to fight for statehood,” Henderson, 38, said.
The council member noted that District residents and leaders don’t have the final say on their local budget dollars, how land in the city is utilized and who the prosecutor is.
“The 60th anniversary should highlight how super important it is for District residents to have voting rights (in the Congress),” she said.
A January 2024 WAMU report, “50 Years of Home Rule : A History of D.C.’s Struggle for (Semi) Self Governance,” highlighted the District’s fight against its own type of voter suppression. The report noted that after the signing of the Voting Rights Act by Johnson, the next thing King did that day was to join a march for District home rule.
“When we left the White House that afternoon, we went up to 14th and U Streets,” the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, King’s lieutenant in D.C., who later became the District’s first delegate to Congress, was quoted saying. He is also Michael Fauntroy’s uncle.
After reaching 14th and U, King and the marchers turned around and went right back to the White House with a banner reading “We’re glad you’re with us Mr. Johnson. We need home rule now.”
“I used to tell Dr. King that we would not be free to govern ourselves in the District of Columbia until Black people were free in the South to register to vote,” said Fauntroy in a 1982 interview with the Washington Times.
As the nation celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Owolewa said it is important for Washingtonians— particularly youth— to understand how the legislation relates to the continued fight for D.C. statehood.
“The recognition of the anniversary should be used as a time to get young people more civically engaged,” he said. “We have set up a satellite organization at Howard University to stress the importance of D.C. statehood. Young people need to understand the role that they can play to make the District the 51st state.”