Trip to Selma Should Be a Call to Action, Not a Celebration

By Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton

I am going to Selma, Alabama this weekend, but I hope I am not the only one of the nearly 100 Members of Congress attending for whom this commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Right Act is not a celebration.  The teeth of the Act, which monitor states with records of voter suppression, have been extracted by the Supreme Court.  Surely, Republicans and Democrats who choose to go should dedicate this year’s Selma trip to the revival of the Voting Rights Act in the House and Senate, not to a celebration of an Act that has been dismembered.