|
BY JENNIFER WEISS-WOLF | At the funeral of Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) one year ago, former President Barack Obama paid homage to the late congressman’s legacy by calling for the realization of our nation’s unfulfilled promise of democracy for all. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American,” Obama declared, “then that’s what we should do.”
Throughout the 20th century, the Senate regularly used the filibuster to undermine and thwart civil rights legislation—blocking measures such as anti-lynching bills, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and proposals that would have prohibited poll taxes and discrimination in voting, housing and employment.
Procedural roadblocks have been similarly leveraged to derail critical gender equity advances of the modern era, most notably the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA’s century-in-the-making path to ratification, now finally on the precipice of victory, faces its next immediate obstacle: the Senate filibuster. (To read the full article, click here.)
[This article originally appears in the Summer 2021 issue of Ms. Become a member today to read more reporting like this in print and through our app.]
|
