“We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead,” Martin Luther King Jr. said to hundreds of thousands who joined the March on Washington on an August morning in 1963. “We cannot turn back.”
Fifty years later, his words reverberate and remain applicable to a new America with the same dream. As we remember his words this week, we should take into account that King gave us a dream — not a plan.
King did not create a ten-step program to fulfill his dream — “that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.”
King’s words were poetry — a romantic ideal of what this country should be. Looking half a century forward, I could not say we live in King’s idyllic America. I could not even call our society a “post-racial” America.
Substantial progress is undeniable: Discriminatory laws have been stricken from the books, allowing people of any color to pursue the same opportunities. Many have evidently reached what was once impossible. Attorney General Eric Holder took the podium at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday in remembrance of the black civil rights struggle, thanking the martyrs before him. Likewise, our president is the poster child of an era that is mostly colorblind, and that is a wonderful sign of evolution.
Alongside the original protesters, LGBT activists and DREAMers — people who meet the general requirements of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act — joined the ranks on Saturday with an interest in becoming fully recognized citizens. And yet, like the Rev. Joseph Lowery said this weekend, everything has changed and nothing has changed.
As I watched the coverage of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington Saturday morning, Lowery’s comment echoed in my mind more than King’s speech or the protesters’ cries for equality. Time, while it brings progress, allows one to have a bad memory.
In June of this year, the Supreme Court of the United States approved a decision to declare part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts declared the majority opinion, saying that while “the Voting Rights Act of 1965 employed extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem,” the act’s coverage is outdated and some states shouldn’t have to enforce heavy federal action as outlined before.
Before Section 4 was trashed, states had to get clearance from the Department of Justice before changing any voting laws. Erasing this section of the VRA allows states like Texas to enforce new discriminatory rules — likely starting next week. According to The Associated Press, all Texas voters will have to provide a state-issued ID to vote, in addition to registration documents. This change has caused uproar among civil rights activists who believe the law could be used to discriminate against color, race or ethnic background.
State voting laws were once carefully guided by the Voting Rights Act. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in the dissenting opinion, “Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness,” to protect voters’ rights.
In 2013, the same cannot be said. The 15th amendment, which bans racial discrimination in the voting process, is still upheld but we have to ask ourselves: Why, after 50 years, is the Supreme Court so willing to let states go back to their individual tactics in the electoral process if this very legislation was our ticket to justice and equality, across the nation, in 1965? Have things really changed so much?
King’s son, Martin Luther King III, took the stage Saturday morning with a particularly spirited speech reminding Americans to take note of the court’s “eviscerating” decision.
“We must not be satisfied, and we must fight back boldly,” he said.
One generation ahead, we march on. King gave us prose, not a plan; but frankly, the work is up to us now.
Daniela Guzman is a UF journalism senior. Her column appears on Mondays. A version of this column ran on page 7 on 8/26/2013 under the headline "'We cannot turn back': Changes to Voting Rights Act damage Martin Luther King’s dream"
