The struggle continues

Fred Klonsky

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”  -- William Faulkner 

Yesterday will go down as a day of infamy in U.S. history.

The Supreme Court ruling, gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the failure of Congress to respond, sets back the struggle for racial equality in this country by some 50 years. The decision will stand, along with previous rulings like Dred Scott, Plessy and Plessy v. Ferguson as another official tribute to institutionalized white supremacy protected faithfully, if inconsistently, by the highest court in the land.

“I think what the court did today is stab the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its very heart," Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who was with President Johnson when he signed the law and who was beaten at Selma, said on the MSNBC program “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”

 Julian Bond, who helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said on MSNBC that the chances were “slim to none” that Congress would agree on a way forward for the law.