Newsweek - USA (2020-08-14)

BY

MARTIN LUTHER KING III

@OfficialMLK

“We have new clusters of infections every day.” » P.

NEWSWEEK.COM 11

Act. Later that year, it became law.

Lewis understood that the unobstructed right

to vote for all citizens, regardless of their race, reli-

gion or gender, is the cornerstone of every great

democracy. A recipient of the Martin Luther King

Jr. Peace Prize, Lewis worked tirelessly to end voter

suppression practices that are still being deployed.

The Voting Rights Alliance lists 61 forms of voter

suppression. These include: reducing the number

of polling places in communities of color, intimi-

dating voters on Election Day, “caging” and purging

of registration rolls in selected ZIP codes, discrim-

inatory voter identification requirements, draco-

nian felon disenfranchisement laws, faulty voting

machines in minority precincts, manipulation of

legal residency requirements for college students,

shrinking the window for early voting in key states

and excessive restrictions on voting

by mail, to name just a few.

Moreover in 2013, the Supreme

Court struck down the heart of

the Voting Rights Act, allowing

states with a history of racially

with the death of georgia congressman
John Lewis, America has lost one of our great-
est champions of freedom and democracy at a time
when voting rights are under relentless attack across
the nation. Lewis’ legacy as a courageous and vision-
ary champion of voting rights for Americans of all
races challenges each of us to carry forward the
nonviolent struggle to eradicate all forms of voter
suppression in the United States.
Lewis was a beloved friend and inspiration to
me, and I was proud that he was my congressman
for many years. Like my father, Martin Luther King
Jr., he personified the power of nonviolence, and
offered his body and his blood to secure the right
of all Americans to vote. Brutally beaten at the
Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, he said he “gave a
little blood” to dramatize the critical importance of
the right to vote. The images of Lewis
and other civil rights movement pro-
testers being assaulted by police on
that day encouraged President Lyn-
don Johnson to call a joint session of
Congress to pass the Voting Rights

A Fitting

Memorial for

John Lewis

The best way to honor the late congressman and civil

rights activist, says the son of another great leader, is to restore

the Voting Rights Act he fought so hard to have passed

OPINION

Photograph by JEFF HUTCHENS