Lyndon Johnson addressed Congress after a group of civil rights workers were attacked in Selma. For Johnson, all of this had to end, and the South needed a new beginning, and what better beginning that to open wide the doors of voting rights - something so essentially American, so right and so very good for the whole of the nation.
He said, among other things:
"I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote ... it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."
Later in the year, August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act became the law of the land.
It's evident that an enlargement of voting rights brought into the political process many who were previously denied the right.
And changes have been made.
But with the SCOTUS challenging the central tenet of the law, we've seen Southern States enacting all kinds of restrictive laws to shrink the voting roles once again.
What we see in all of this is a failure, a sad failure, of the South and its White Elites, to change their attitudes. For many of them, white supremacy is still the dream, the goal, the right of the White Race. The Civil War is still being fought, and the humiliation of loss and defeat stings the Southern Soul.
Granted, the Southern Soul is found in lots of places - like the Central Valley in CA and parts of PA - but if migration patterns are noted, what we find in other parts of the nation is often rooted in Southern Migrants who took with them their racial views and religious sentiments.
