SUPREME COURT TO HEAR SHELBY COUNTY ARGUMENT AGAINST VOTING RIGHTS ACT

 

NAACP warns Supreme Court: Thwart assault on Voting Rights Act or risk return to ‘old poison’

 

 

 

"Debo Adegbile to go before supreme court to defend Voting Rights Act and argue key provision should not be struck down"

 

 

"The lawyer who will  ..." [Wednesday, February 27, 2013] "go before the US supreme court to defend the Voting Rights Act has warned that if a key provision of the law that prevents discrimination at the polling booth largely in southern states is struck down, it would “set the hands of the clock winding backwards” for millions of minority voters.

 

 

Debo Adegbile, special counsel for the NAACP, the country’s largest civil rights organisation, will have the momentous task on Wednesday of defending one of the mainstays of America’s prolonged struggle against racial discrimination.

 

 

Lined up against him will be an array of conservative lawyers and legislators, many based in the south, where the sting of the legislation is felt most keenly.

 

 

Wednesday’s hearing, in which the nine supreme court justices will hear oral argument before delivering a ruling expected in June, is being seen as the greatest threat to the Voting Rights Act since it was enacted in 1965. The focus of the debate will be Section 5, a provision under which 16 states – mainly though not exclusively in the south – are subject to stringent federal monitoring designed to prevent them discriminating against African American and other minority voters."

 

 

Follow rest of article HERE

 

 

Related articles, etc:

 

 

VOTING RIGHTS ACT

 

 
 

 

SECTION 5 of Voting Rights Act: "Section 5 currently applies to nine states in their entirety: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. It also applies to identified parts of a further seven states: California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota."

 

 

SHELBYCOUNTY V HOLDER TARGET THE HEART OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

 

 

RACIAL ENTITLEMENT- Term used by JUSTICE SCALIA:    "Scalia has generally voted to strike down laws which make distinctions by race, gender, or sexual orientation .... "   "To pursue the concept of racial entitlement – even for the most admirable and benign of purposes – is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.^{[74] "[WIKIPEDIA]}

 

 

 

 

MAPLE HEIGHTS - DENIAL OF VOTE FOR DISTRICT 5

 

 

 

 

THINK THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT IS OUTDATED? COME TO SOUTH CAROLINA





WHY THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT IS AS IMPORTANT TODAY AS IT WAS IN 1965







SOTOMAYOR LEADS LIBERAL JUSTICES IN DEFENDING THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT
 

 

 

 

TALE OF THE DESCENDANTS OF THE LAST SLAVE SHIP

I came across this amazing story of the descendants of the last slave ship while on my usual internet journey looking for fascinating stories on Black history.

This a brief excerpt from  Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America  

Please make sure you get "Dreams of Africa in Alabama ..." by award winning author, Sylviane Diouf.

"On a January night in 2002, a truck backed up to a statue in front of Union Missionary Baptist Church, north of Mobile, Alabama.

One or two people got out, cut through parts of the heavy bronze bust, ripped it from its brick base, and disappeared with their loot.  The theft shocked and angered the congregation of pastor A.J. Crawford Sr..  They  had just celebrated the New Year and were preparing to commemorate, the following month, the 130th anniversary of the church. Unlike those of the Virgin Mary or George Washington, this statue was the only one of its kind in the country. The theft struck at the very core of a community that will never have any equivalent in North America. Determined to bring the statue back home, the congregation established a reward fund. In case the bust was not found, the money would be used to cast a new one. The wooden model, carved fifty years earlier, was still in town.

The statue dated back to 1959, when a steel shaft was sunk 100 feet into the earth in front of the church, to commemorate the one hundred years that had passed since the honored man and his companions had set foot on Alabama soil. The bust and the shaft were the symbols of an exceptional tale. In the summer of 1860, less than a year before the outbreak of the Civil War, one hundred and ten young men, women, and children were brought to the Alabama River, north of Mobile. They had just spent six weeks onboard the Clotilda, a fast schooner that had brought them from a world away. They were the last recorded group of captive Africans brought to the United States. Acting for Timothy Meaher, one of the most prominent businessmen in Mobile, Captain William Foster had smuggled them in under cover of night. He had to be careful because decades earlier, on January 1, 1808, the country had abolished the international slave trade. Although tens of thousands of Africans had since landed, the slavers could, in theory, be hanged.

Follow the rest of the introduction HERE