[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 145 (Tuesday, August 10, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E886-E887]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    COMMEMORATING 56TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

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                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, August 10, 2021

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I rise today not just to commemorate 
the landmark achievement of 56 years ago but to inform our colleagues 
and the nation of the need to redouble and rededicate our efforts to 
the work that remains to be done to protect the right of all Americans 
to vote free from discrimination and the injustices that prevent them 
from exercising this most fundamental right of citizenship.
  On August 6, 1965, in the rotunda of the Capitol and in the presence 
of such luminaries as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. 
Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Roy 
Wilkins of the NAACP; Whitney Young of the National Urban League; James 
Foreman of the Congress of Racial Equality; A. Philip Randolph of the 
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis of the Student Non-
Violent Coordinating Committee; Senators Robert Kennedy, Hubert 
Humphrey, and Everett Dirksen; President Johnson addressed the nation 
before signing the Voting Rights Act:
  ``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for 
breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which 
imprison men because they are different from other men.''
  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was critical to preventing brazen voter 
discrimination violations that historically left millions of African 
Americans disenfranchised. In 1940, for example, there were less than 
30,000 African Americans registered to vote in Texas and only about 3 
percent of African Americans living in the south were registered to 
vote. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats of violence were the 
major causes of these racially discriminatory results. After passage of 
the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited these discriminatory 
practices, registration and electoral participation steadily increased 
to the point that by 2012, more than 1.2 million African Americans 
living in Texas were registered to vote.
  In 1964, the year before the Voting Rights Act became law, there were 
approximately 300 African Americans in public office, including just 
three in Congress. Few, if any, African Americans held elective office 
anywhere in the south. Because of the Voting Rights Act, today there 
are more than 9,100 black elected officials, including 46 members of 
Congress, the largest number ever. Because of the Voting Rights Act of 
1965 signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on this day 53 years 
ago, I stand before you as the first African American woman Ranking 
Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, 
Homeland Security, and Investigations.
  Madam Speaker, the Voting Rights Act opened the political process for 
many of the approximately 6,000 Hispanic public officials that have 
been elected and appointed nationwide, including more than 275 at the 
state or federal level, 32 of whom serve in Congress. Native Americans, 
Asians, and others who have historically encountered harsh barriers to 
full political participation also have benefited greatly. The crown 
jewel of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is Section 5, which requires 
that states and localities with a chronic record of discrimination in 
voting practices secure federal approval before making any changes to 
voting processes. Section 5 protects minority voting rights where voter 
discrimination has historically been the worst.
  Since 1982, Section 5 has stopped more than 1,000 discriminatory 
voting changes in their tracks, including 107 discriminatory changes 
right here in Texas. And it is a source of eternal pride to all of us 
in Houston that in pursuit of extending the full measure of citizenship 
to all Americans, in 1975 Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who also 
represented this historic 18th Congressional District of Texas, 
introduced, and the Congress adopted, what are now Sections 4(f)(3) and 
4(f)(4) of the Voting Rights Act, which extended the protections of 
Section 4(a) and Section 5 to language minorities. During the floor 
debate on the 1975 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, 
Congresswoman Jordan explained why this reform was needed:
  ``There are Mexican-American people in the State of Texas who have 
been denied the right to vote; who have been impeded in their efforts 
to register and vote; who have not had encouragement from those 
election officials because they are brown people.
  ``So, the state of Texas, if we approve this measure, would be 
brought within the coverage of this Act for the first time.''
  When it comes to extending and protecting the precious right to vote, 
the Lone Star State, the home state of Lyndon Johnson and Barbara 
Jordan, can be the leading state in the Union, one that sets the 
example for the nation. But to realize that future, we must turn from 
and not return to the dark days of the past. We must remain ever 
vigilant and oppose all schemes that will abridge or dilute the 
precious right to vote. Madam Speaker, I am here today to remind the 
nation that the right to vote, that ``powerful instrument that can 
break down the walls of injustice,'' is facing grave threats.
  The threat stems from the decision issued in June 2013 by the Supreme 
Court in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 193 (2013), which 
invalidated Section 4(b) of the VRA, and paralyzed the application of 
the VRA's Section 5 preclearance requirements. According to the Supreme 
Court majority, the reason for striking down Section 4(b) was that 
``times change.'' Now, the Court was right; times have changed. But 
what the Court did not fully appreciate is that the positive changes it 
cited are due almost entirely to the existence and vigorous enforcement 
of the Voting Rights Act. And that is why the Voting Rights Act is 
still needed. Let me put it this way: in the same way that the vaccine 
invented by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1953 eradicated the crippling effects but 
did not eliminate the cause of polio, the Voting Rights Act succeeded 
in stymieing the practices that resulted in the wholesale 
disenfranchisement of African Americans and language minorities but did 
eliminate them entirely.
  The Voting Rights Act is needed as much today to prevent another 
epidemic of voting disenfranchisement as Dr. Salk's vaccine is still 
needed to prevent another polio epidemic. However, officials in some 
states, notably Texas and North Carolina, seemed to regard the Shelby 
decision as a green light and

[[Page E887]]

rushed to implement election laws, policies, and practices that could 
never pass muster under the Section 5 preclearance regime. My 
constituents remember very well the Voter ID law passed in Texas in 
2011, which required every registered voter to present a valid 
government-issued photo ID on the day of polling in order to vote. The 
Justice Department blocked the law in March of 2012, and it was Section 
5 that prohibited it from going into effect. At least it did until the 
Shelby decision, because on the very same day that Shelby was decided 
officials in Texas announced they would immediately implement the Photo 
ID law, and other election laws, policies, and practices that could 
never pass muster under the Section 5 preclearance regime.
  The Texas Photo ID law was challenged in federal court and the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the decision of U.S. 
District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos that Texas' strict voter 
identification law discriminated against Blacks and Hispanics and 
violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Madam Speaker, protecting 
voting rights and combating voter suppression schemes are two of the 
critical challenges facing our great democracy. Without safeguards to 
ensure that all citizens have equal access to the polls, more 
injustices are likely to occur and the voices of millions silenced. 
Those of us who cherish the right to vote justifiably are skeptical of 
Voter ID laws because we understand how these laws, like poll taxes and 
literacy tests, can be used to impede or negate the ability of seniors, 
racial and language minorities, and young people to cast their votes. 
Consider the demographic groups who lack a government issued ID:
  African Americans: 25 percent;
  Asian Americans: 20 percent;
  Hispanic Americans: 19 percent;
  young people, aged 18 through 24: 18 percent;
  persons with incomes less than $35,000: 15 percent;
  And there are other ways abridging or suppressing the right to vote, 
including:
  Curtailing or eliminating early voting;
  ending same-day registration;
  not counting provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct on 
Election Day will not count;
  eliminating adolescent pre-registration;
  shortening poll hours.
  Lessening the standards governing voter challenges thus allowing 
self-proclaimed ``ballot security vigilantes'' like the King Street 
Patriots to cause trouble at the polls.
  Madam Speaker, on this day, the 56th anniversary of the landmark 
Voting Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 
6, 1965, I call upon the leadership of Congress in both chambers to 
bring to a vote legislation intended to protect the right to vote of 
all Americans.
  Specifically, I call for the passage of H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting 
Rights Advancement Act, of which I am an original co-sponsor, which 
repairs the damage done to the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court's 
Shelby decision. This legislation provides even greater federal 
oversight of jurisdictions which have a history of voter suppression 
and protects vulnerable communities from discriminatory voting 
practices. Madam Speaker, before concluding there is one other point I 
would like to stress.
  In his address to the nation before signing the Voting Rights Act of 
1965, President Johnson said:
  ``Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to 
the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which 
await the wise use of the ballot.
  ``But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied 
the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use 
that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice 
and fulfilment.''
  In other words, political power, and the justice, opportunity, 
inclusion, and fulfillment it provides, comes not from the right to 
vote but in the exercise of that right. And that means it is the civic 
obligation of every citizen to both register and vote in every 
election, state and local as well as federal. Because if we can 
register and vote, but fail to do so, we are guilty of voluntary voter 
suppression, the most effective method of disenfranchisement ever 
devised. And in recent years, Americans have not been doing a very good 
job of exercising our civic responsibility to register, vote, and make 
their voices heard.
  Madam Speaker, for millions of Americans, the right to vote protected 
by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is sacred treasure, earned by the 
sweat and toil and tears and blood of ordinary Americans who showed the 
world it was possible to accomplish extraordinary things. So on this 
56th anniversary of that landmark law, let us rededicate ourselves to 
honoring those who won for us this precious right by remaining vigilant 
and fighting against both the efforts of others to abridge or suppress 
the right to vote and our own apathy in exercising this sacred right

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