On August 28, 1963 — the day an estimated quarter of a million Americans participated in the seminal March on Washington for Jobs and Equality — I hadn’t been born yet. But like so many Black Americans of my generation and subsequent generations, my life was inexorably shaped by the promise of that moment and the movement it represented. Unfortunately, so much of the political backlash we’re now facing — especially with regard to voting rights — was also brewing in the peril the March on Washington represented to white supremacy.
It can be hard from a distance to realize what an existential threat that moment posed to centuries of formal racial hierarchy and oppression. The March on Washington, held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, was also a figurative monument to the larger civil rights movement. In a nation built on enslaving Black people, that then ended formal slavery only to enshrine disparate treatment through Jim Crow segregation laws and the criminalization of Black lives and bodies, the March on Washington saw masses of Black Americans and many of their white allies coming together at an unprecedented scale to stand, peacefully but firmly, for justice. Bayard Rustin, a lead organizer of the March, described the pivotal power of the moment: “There were about three hundred congressmen there, but none of them said a word…. they came and saw that it was very orderly, that there was fantastic determination, that there were all kinds of people there other than black people, they knew there was a consensus in this country for the civil rights bill.” It was a moment where Americans of all walks of life joined not only to demand a more equitable nation but to show what that nation might look like. And that multi-racial, just and equitable nation frankly scares some white Americans — who would like to do whatever possible to stop it.
It’s no coincidence that the 2020 Census data were released just days before the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington. The increased racial diversity we see across the United States today ripples outward from that hot August afternoon when a diverse group of Americans came together to demand a more inclusive and just nation. We are becoming the nation our ancestors dreamed of and fought for. And yet we are also facing the same entrenched opposition they fought. This year alone, 18 states have passed 30 laws to make it harder for Americans to vote — laws that disproportionately suppress Black voters in particular. And there are more than 400 other such bills pending in nearly every single state in the nation, according to tracking from the Brennan Center. The goal, plain and simple, is to rollback hard-won voting rights and stop our nation’s march toward inclusion and equity. This observation is neither hyperbolic nor conspiratorial; anti-democratic forces have been very explicit about this for decades. As Jane Mayer recently documented in the New Yorker, “Forty years ago, Paul Weyrich, who helped establish the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, admitted, ‘I don’t want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.’” Those who want to maintain the economic and racial hierarchies on which the United States was founded see voting rights — and especially Black voting rights — as an obstacle.
When Bayard Rustin described that remarkable day in Washington, DC, 58 years ago, he said, “What made the march was that black people voted that day with their feet.” But of course the greatest legacy of the civil rights movement was consecrating the ability of Black Americans to actually vote with their ballots, so that our always imperfect and messy democracy could at least finally, meaningfully include all voices. Make no mistake, those who are trying to roll back voting rights in this moment are trying to roll back the promise and progress of the civil rights movement — and are trying to stop the United States from becoming a just, fair, inclusive multi-racial nation. For the sake of generations to come, it is vital that we vote — with our feet and our clicks and our protests and, yes, also our ballots — to stop them from unraveling our progress.
Andrea Hailey
CEO, Vote.org