Justice for Black voters? Or rap songs and sneakers?

Vice President Kamala Harris marked the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala., this past Sunday, joining in a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, re-creating the steps of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and other leaders and citizens demanding the vote.

On March 7, 1965, that group was stopped by violence meted out by law enforcement, but their well-publicized bravery surely shamed the country and Congress into passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson that August.

Why then, did the vice president’s message speak so much of work to be done? As she said: “Today, in states across our nation, extremists pass laws to ban drop boxes, limit early voting, and restrict absentee ballots. … Across our nation, extremists attack the integrity of free and fair elections, causing a rise of threats and violence against poll workers.”

Since 1965, provisions of the Voting Rights Act have been chipped away, with a majority-Republican-appointed Supreme Court declaring racial discrimination over in the 2013 Shelby case, and GOP-majority states anxious to prove them wrong, falling over themselves to gerrymander and enact restrictive laws.

A recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that the racial turnout gap — the difference in the turnout rate between white and nonwhite voters — has consistently grown since 2012 and “is growing most quickly in parts of the country that were previously covered under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act,” which forced jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to “preclear” changes in voting policy with the courts or Justice Department.

In Alabama, it took lawsuits to gain an additional U.S. House district, in time for this week’s primary, and one that would give Black voters a fighting chance. This is in a state where African Americans make up 27 percent of the electorate but where just one majority-Black district is currently represented by Rep. Terri A. Sewell, a Black Democrat, in a seven-member delegation.

Sewell was with Harris on Sunday, though she didn’t have much company from Republican House colleagues. In the past, Democratic and Republican members of Congress put aside differences to honor the moral rightness of the marchers’ cause and walk side by side.

Not today.

All this doesn’t mean politicians of every affiliation don’t crave the support of minority voters. With reports and polling on the number of Black and Hispanic voters who seem to be turning away from President Joe Biden and giving former President Donald Trump, Republicans and third parties a second look, the race is on for any constituent who may make the difference in November.

But instead of courting minority voters with policies that would, say, grace them with a sip of water or a snack while waiting in long voting lines (looking at you, Georgia) or stopping poll observers from peeking over shoulders to catch nonexistent skullduggery (part of new rules in North Carolina), some are taking a different approach.

Why not roll out the “bling,” including incredibly tacky, $399 high-top golden sneakers?

Transforming Alabama – and young voters. Nothing is off the table

Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the franchise to all Americans, Alabama has often been at the center of voting debates. This year is no exception. New maps ordered by and approved by the courts after a contentious yearslong battle could give the state’s Black voters a greater voice, and affect the balance of power in Congress after the 2024 elections. But it all depends on turnout.

Formerly a candidate, Dr. Adia Winfrey is now focused on voter mobilization and education through her organization, Transform Alabama, and sometimes uses some of the hip-hop strategies that energized her campaign. Student ambassador Maurice Gray is a believer, and has joined the cause to urge young people to care — and to vote. Both join this episode of Equal Time.

North Carolina and the Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court has finished handing down decisions for the term, and this year North Carolina was at the center of some major rulings.

The court ruled against the University of North Carolina and Harvard in a case involving affirmative action, effectively ending the programs across the country. We discuss the impact.

Elsewhere, in a case that some say had a massive impact on the future of American democracy, the Supreme Court ruled against North Carolina on the independent state legislature theory. Had the ruling gone the other way, state courts would no longer have oversight over state elections. What does this mean for the future of this fringe theory?

Lastly, why is North Carolina at the center of these fights? Is it just a coincidence, or does it say more about the state’s political landscape?

We delve into these questions on the next Charlotte Talks.

GUESTS:

Michael Bitzer, professor of politics and history at Catawba College

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Roll Call and host of the Roll Call podcast “Equal Time”

Chris Parker, associate professor of political science and pre-law advisor at the University of Rhode Island

Is former battleground North Carolina becoming a Florida clone?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina is a state on the verge. Of what? Well, that depends on whom you ask. Some residents are thrilled that the state seems to be politically falling in line with a bunch of its neighbors to the south, most recently with an abortion bill. Others, particularly those who felt protected in relatively progressive urban bubbles, aren’t happy with the shift and are vocalizing their displeasure.

To back up a bit, in the past few years, the state’s tint could reasonably have been described as a reddish shade of purple. You could see it in its Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, with moderate policies and a calm demeanor that shielded his resolve, and a competing state legislature with a Republican majority big enough to flex its muscles but still subject to a veto when it pushed too far right.

There were the occasional cautionary tales, as in 2016, when then-Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the infamous HB2, or as it was nicknamed, the “Bathroom Bill.” It was the state GOP’s response to a Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance, particularly the part that said people could use the bathroom for the gender with which they identified.

That installment in the ever-present rural vs. urban culture clash attracted the national spotlight as well as late-night comics’ jokes. Both proved harsh.

When concerts — including “The Boss,” Bruce Springsteen — and beloved basketball tournaments were canceled, once-bold politicians backtracked and McCrory lost his reelection race to Cooper, who is now approaching the end of his second term.

But memories are short, especially after the 2022 midterms, when the stars and voters aligned for North Carolina Republicans.

While Democrats did better than expected nationally, Republicans held their own and even made gains in North Carolina. Ted Budd, who as a House member voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory, won the U.S. Senate seat of the retiring Richard Burr, one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict Donald Trump on an impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection.

That’s a philosophical, if not party, change.

In the state General Assembly, Republicans won a veto-proof majority in the state Senate and came one vote short in the House. The state’s Supreme Court changed as well, with a 4-3 Democratic majority shifting to a 5-2 Republican advantage.

When Democratic state Rep. Tricia Cotham, months after her election in a blue district, donned a red dress for her April announcement of a switch to the GOP, any gubernatorial veto became vulnerable to an override.

A word about Cotham: Shocked constituents and folks who knew her when — meaning: all her political life — asked how someone who campaigned with support from those who supported LGBTQ rights, someone who spoke of her own abortion when she stood firm in support of reproductive freedom a few short years ago, who had said, as The Charlotte Observer pointed out, she would “stand up to Republican attacks on our health care” as well as “oppose attacks on our democracy, preserve fundamental voting rights, and ensure all voices are heard” could turn on a dime? Well, she explained, Democrats hurt her feelings; many feeling burned by the bait-and-switch are not quite buying it.

Attention, though, is now focused on a GOP agenda in overdrive, mirroring moves in Ron DeSantis-led Florida, with a few extras.

Why the rush, in a state with registered voters roughly split into thirds among Democrats, Republicans and the unaffiliated, and where elections up and down the ballot are always close?

Because Republicans can.

Two visions of America’s past — and future

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” And just to make sure everyone in the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference and those watching at home got the message, former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated that last line: “I am your retribution.”

Trump revisited his “American carnage” 2017 inauguration speech to again paint a picture of an angry and divided America — with a promise to lead a charge into battle if elected.

On the same weekend, President Joe Biden traveled to Selma, Ala., to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that day on March 7, 1965, when marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge heading to the capital city of Montgomery for voting rights and for justice in the name of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson — who was killed by an Alabama state trooper — were met with violence from law enforcement as the world watched.

The result of the marchers’ resolve and sacrifice was the Voting Rights Act, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.

“No matter how hard some people try, we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know,” Biden said Sunday. “We should learn everything — the good, the bad, the truth — of who we are as a nation.”

And, after renewing his call to strengthen those same voting rights citizens had demanded that day in 1965, Biden concluded: “My fellow Americans, on this Sunday of our time, we know where we’ve been and we know, more importantly, where we have to go: forward together.”

At CPAC at National Harbor, Md., last week, the speaker’s list included Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, whose followers attacked his country’s capital city after his loss; and Kari Lake, still in election denial about her own November defeat in Arizona’s gubernatorial race. Notice the theme?

Attendees could choose between sessions on “Finish the Wall, Build the Dome” or “No Chinese Balloon Above Tennessee,” but there was no room for a lesson on the American history made on that Selma bridge 58 years ago.

A Fourth of July tribute to those who love a country that won’t protect them

Just who deserves protection in America?

If you observe the folks this country chooses to protect and chooses to ignore, you may get an answer that doesn’t exactly line up with America’s ideals.

When Wandrea “Shaye” Moss bravely testified before members of the House Select Committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, I was enraged, though I know my rage slips me into the stereotypical category of “angry Black woman.” I refuse to give up a full palette of emotions because of fear of judgment.

When I heard her mother, Ruby Freeman, speak of the horrors she has had to endure, I was sad for her and for America. “Lady Ruby” was the moniker she proudly used to display on her shirt until racist political operatives dragged that earned good name through the mud.

At an age when she should be comfortably enjoying life, lauded for her community service, Lady Ruby’s life has been forever changed. “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” she asked. “The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American.”

She’s right, of course.

Yesterday’s march, with lessons for today

March 7, 1965, is a day to remember.

That was never a problem for 90-year-old Ora Bell Shannon of Selma, Ala., then a young mother who ran with her children from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, or for Betty Boynton, who could see the tear gas rising and baton-wielding state troopers beating peaceful marchers.

Civil rights activists — among them Amelia Boynton, Betty Boynton’s mother-in-law, and a young John Lewis — put their bodies on the line to create the headlines and the international shock that forced action from Washington. In truth, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 simply put teeth into the enforcement of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ignored by state and local governments intent on blocking African Americans from the ballot box.

Back then, it was about the right to vote, and in 2022, it is still about the right to vote, reinforced by the hard-won Voting Rights Act of 1965 but increasingly under attack by state laws placing obstacles in the way of those least able to overcome them.

As many, including Vice President Kamala Harris, traveled to Selma this past Sunday to commemorate what has become known as “Bloody Sunday,” the landscape has changed in a country where many have lost the ability to be shocked or to find common cause with citizens different from themselves.

 It is a world where, as Senate Democrats hold their annual issues conference at Howard University in Washington, elevating the excellence of that institution, students seeking an education at historically Black colleges and universities face bomb threats.

It’s easy to forget that in the not-that-distant past, the annual ceremony in Selma, including a symbolic march across the bridge named for a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader, had been bipartisan. In 2015, a chastened Kevin McCarthy, then House majority leader, attended the 50th anniversary of the historic march in Selma after initial reports that no GOP congressional leaders would be there.

What do the census, voting rights and democracy have in common?

Emails made public by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School recently showed that officials under President Donald Trump tried whatever they could to rig the system for redistricting purposes. It and other government documents detailed clashes between the administration and the bureau’s experts in areas that had the potential of affecting the count and who gets elected. Mary C. Curtis sits down with Kelly Percival, with the Brennan Center’s Democracy to discuss what this all means.

‘Beat them in court, beat them in Congress and beat them at the polls’

On the one year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the administration woke up to it’s fifth defeat in six months in passing legislation to ensure voting rights for all. Biden had promised to put voting rights at the top of his agenda, but the path appears more fraught than ever. Mary C. Curtis speaks with White House Senior Advisor Cedric Richmond on what comes next.

Americans who excuse violence need to see the world through Maxine McNair’s eyes — and soul

It looked like an ordinary room when I visited it years ago, a place you’d pause for a chat in the middle of a work day or to enjoy that lunch packed from home. But it was so much more, a room where memories and emotions overwhelm in the space of a few seconds.

When a business trip took me to Birmingham, Ala., I knew I had to visit, to witness at the 16th Street Baptist Church, where cowards placed a bomb that injured many and murdered four little girls getting ready for a church program on Sept. 15, 1963.

While the church itself is a beautiful sanctuary, the basement space is no less sacred.

That is what violence looks like, violence spurred by hate, violence that ended the lives of Addie Mae Collins, 14; Cynthia Wesley, 14; Carole Robertson, 14, and Carol Denise McNair, just 11 years old. It wasn’t just Ku Klux Klan members whose fingerprints stained that evil and bloody act. Among the guilty were the “good” white citizens of Alabama, the leaders and politicians, who feared any change in the social, economic and political order that solidified their status, their place at the top. Whether silent or vocal, they supported the folks who did the dirty work.

Maxine McNair, the last living parent of any of the girls killed in the 1963 church bombing, died on Jan. 2 at the age of 93. Any mother, any person, could and should feel a piece of that pain in their bones; they should try to imagine how it might have felt to live nearly 60 years after burying a child, all those years to remember what was and to think of what might have been.

Short-term memories

Instead, a lot of Americans have apparently forgotten that important historical event from not that long ago. It’s not that surprising if you paid any attention to how divided Americans were in their commemoration of an insurrection, a violent attempt to overturn the results of an election judged fair by officials of every political party.

And that was just one year ago, on Jan. 6, 2021.

recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that about 1 in 3 Americans believed violence against the government could at times be justified. Though that third included all Americans, who listed a range of said justifications, from vaccine requirements to “protection,” there was a distinct partisan divide — with 40 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats indicating approval.