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WASHINGTON — In the summer of 1962, 20-year-old Dorie Ladner accompanied a busload of black Mississippi residents to the county seat in Indianola, where the group of 18 tried to register to vote. It was a brave effort, if not something of a death wish.
Back then in Mississippi, literacy tests and poll taxes were par for the course, as was intimidation and sometimes actual violence. That day in Indianola, white men with guns drove circles around the county courthouse. Ladner, who was an early member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, recalled that the entire cohort was unable to register.
“It was uneventful in that no one was beaten,” she told The Huffington Post.
Such blatant, systemic discrimination to stop African-Americans from voting now seems the stuff of history books. The credit goes to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was signed into law 50 years ago this Thursday.
The VRA has been called “the most successful civil rights statute” in the nation’s history and the “crown jewel” of the civil rights movement. But its victory is not permanent. Minority voting rights are again under attack in America, as the bipartisan congressional majorities that once backed the VRA have crumbled.
