Norton Sees Irony in Selma Congressional Trip to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of 1965 Voting Rights Act
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) tomorrow will join a bipartisan delegation of Members of Congress traveling to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Bloody Sunday, which occurred on March 7, 1965, when hundreds of civil rights activists of every background marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were met with brutally violent attacks by local police. The historic events in Selma directly led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was signed into law on August 9, 1965. Norton, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, spent time working for voting rights in Mississippi.
"The irony of nearly 100 Republican and Democratic Members of Congress going to Selma on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act this weekend will not be lost on the country," Norton said. "The Voting Rights Act that we will commemorate has been dismembered by the Supreme Court, and only the Members of Congress on this trip and their colleagues can reshape and restore it. Yet, we go empty handed without a bill that could be the occasion for a real celebration of even the promise of a bill. In fact, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), said at the beginning of this Congress that he will not even have a hearing on updating the law. The only way to hold our heads up this weekend is to use the trip to get the fortitude to come back to Washington and give the country its Voting Rights Act back."
Click here to read Norton's latest blog post on Norton's trip to Selma.