Last week’s 47th commemoration of the Bloody Sunday March of 1965 marks a new phase in the civil rights movement. It represents a turning point for people from all backgrounds, who are joining together, not only to remember our shared past, but also to fight for a shared future. It’s a moment of recognition from all sides that, though our nation has progressed since 1965, we are not yet finished with the struggle to include everyone in the fullness that American life has to offer.
Until recently, efforts to undermine civil and human rights had taken a subtler approach than in times past. The targets have diversified, the rhetoric has evolved. The deadly violence that once denied people their most basic rights – to vote, to attend public schools, to climb the economic ladder, and to march – has today been masked by a more genteel language, and replaced with a more systemic type of discrimination. Yet, the efforts are still pernicious.
But Alabama’s H.B. 56, by targeting Latinos and immigrant populations, has resurrected the dark days of fear mongering and racism. Under this law, anyone who "looks foreign" is a target of a law that will be enforced by racial profiling. Meanwhile, across the country, voter suppression laws are making it increasingly harder for people of all backgrounds – particularly minorities – to participate in the democratic process.
The violence surrounding the first march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 was a climactic event for our nation and led to the introduction and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It cost the lives of men like Jimmie Lee Johnson, an African-American protester who was murdered while protecting his mother, and Reverend James Reeb, a white minister from Boston who was savagely beaten to death and denied treatment by ...