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John, today we recognize the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, when civil rights heroes including a then 25-year-old John Lewis crossed a bridge named after a Confederate officer, U.S. Senator, and Ku Klux Klansman named Edmund Pettus.
On the other side of that bridge, John and his colleagues were met by officers of the state who beat them within an inch of their lives.
But in order to tell that story, we need to go many decades further back, to 1890.
That was the year that Representative Henry Cabot Lodge introduced the Federal Elections Bill to appoint federal supervisors in U.S. House elections, to ensure that Black Americans could exercise their Constitutional right to vote.
Segregationists filibustered and killed the Lodge bill, and just a few years after the hope and promise of Reconstruction, Jim Crow became the law of the land all across the American South.
When the activism of John Lewis and others brought the Voting Rights Act of 1965 up again, segregationists again filibustered the bill for over two months.
The history of the filibuster is not noble, or bipartisan, or even a part of how our Constitution is written. It is a relic of Jim Crow, and we must acknowledge that.
It has an ugly history of denying Constitutional rights, entrenching white supremacy, and subjugating Black Americans to minority rule.
This is living history. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act that John Lewis put his life on the line to pass, and ever since then, Republicans have done everything they can to turn back the clock.
In the last Congress, Republican Senators again used the filibuster to deny passage of bills we passed in the House — H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
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I hope this bit of history gives you some perspective and renews your commitment to our fight for justice and democracy. Thanks for doing your part by adding your name today.
— Adam
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