That's John Lewis getting the billy-club treatment in Selma, Alabama, March 1965.
His skull was fractured when police went berserk.
I wish I was
surprised.
It took the Senate Banking Committee about two minutes on Tuesday to unanimously pass a bill honoring those who walked in the historic 1965 civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama.
"I am pleased to serve as an original co-sponsor of this bill," said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman, moments before it passed.
But while the bill has a noble aim -- to award the Congressional Gold Medal to thousands of people who marched on Bloody Sunday, Turnaround Tuesday and the final stretch of the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery -- most of its supporters are doing nothing to restore the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law that came in response to those marches.
This is the America we live in in 2015.
The same conservative members of Congress, understanding the gravity of the moment, speedily voted to honor the brave men and women who fought and bled, just 50 years ago, for the right to vote in the United States, have all but refused, over the course of the past 18 months, to do anything at all to restore the strength of the Voting Rights Act.
Not only that, but states all across the country are using voter suppression, particularly of African Americans, as an election strategy. Al Jazeera sadly details how state after state, all with conservative political leaders, are enacting new laws to eat away at the Voting Rights Act. Furthermore, a new study determined the places least likely to discriminate against Latino voters were those previously protected by the Voting Rights Act.
In the phenomenal piece, Jim Crow Returns, Al Jazeera goes into great detail on how millions and millions of voters are being suppressed across the country by conservative leaders. This is why it smacks of complete fakery when lawmakers so quickly vote to honor the living legends who fought for the right to vote while simultaneously tearing apart what they fought for every chance they get.