Bullets to ballots: looking back at Selma, building bridges to a democratic future.

The Unfinished Agenda of The Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March (John Wiley & Sons, March 2005, $24.95, ISBN 0-471-71037-7) by the editors of Black Issues in Higher Education, our sister publication, examines the history of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march in Alabama 40 years ago, and the role it played as a catalyst for the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the work yet to be done toward full enfranchisement of all Americans. From the many excellent contributions to the book, we chose excerpts from Tavis Smiley's introduction and President Bill Clinton's speech at the anniversary observance of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma on March 5, 2000.--A.P.D.

Introduction

In the South, voting used to be a whites-only affair. In 1955, a black farmer in Mississippi was shot to death in broad daylight in front of a county courthouse for "trying to get Negroes to vote." No one was ever arrested. In 1964, although 12 million out of 16 million African Americans lived in the South, less than 10 percent of them could vote. Southern states controlled all the mechanisms for enforcing federal laws. So it's not a matter of conjecture on my part that those states ignored the Supreme Court mid the U.S. Constitution. They did.

The Civil Rights Movement kept the struggle for equal protection under the law alive. In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. brought his organization to Selma, Alabama, where college students and grassroots leaders were waging a dogged voter registration campaign.

Writing from jail after his arrest in a Selma mass protest, King observed sharply:

"In Selma, Ala., thousands of Negroes are courageously providing dramatic witness to the evil forces that bar our way to the all-important ballot box. They are laying bare for all the nation to see, for all the world to know, the nature of segregationist resistance."

On Sunday, March 7, six hundred brave souls assembled by the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a 65-mile protest march to the state capitol in Montgomery. State troopers cut them down with tear gas, whips, and clubs. A shocked nation watched on television. The incident, known as "Bloody Sunday," changed the destiny of black America, and, for that matter, America itself. The Constitution stopped being something the South could ignore. By March 21, some 4,000 protesters left Selma, headed to Montgomery again. Violence continued, but more people kept coming. By the time they reached Montgomery on March 25, they were more than 25,000 strong.

On August 6, under pressure from Lyndon Johnson's White House, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) ending the South's Gestapo-like control of the polls.

The Unfinished Voting Rights Agenda

Flash forward to today. The Voting Rights Act is coming up for renewal in 2007. A national conversation about what this means, and what is at stake, is already underway. This book comes in handy to help you analyze why. Why, for example, do experts believe further reform is needed? What is the history behind the voting rights struggle? What are the implications of the 2000 and 2004 elections? In addition to cutting-edge research data, this book offers classic views and thought-provoking insights from leading opinion makers on the contemporary political scene.

The editors of Black Issues in Higher Education challenge the assumption that voting rights are something simplistic that we can take for granted. If you think the fact that your vote fulfills your total obligation to the people who struggled for you to have that right, think again. If you think that voting reform is someone else's business and not yours, think again.