Opinion

OP-ED: Beyond the Bridge in Selma: The Suppression Never Ended

Published

11 years ago

February 7, 2015

The stirring film “Selma” ends with Dr. King leading civil rights marchers across the bridge and to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It will help a new generation of Americans appreciate that historic accomplishment.

But what should not be forgotten is that the passage of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t the end of the battle. The effort to suppress the rights of African Americans to vote continued. Southern states and localities invented a range of techniques – from making voting and registration difficult to gerrymandering districts to get the right results.

African Americans made progress, but not without a fight.

Vital to the continuing fight was the Voting Rights Act, particularly section 5 which gave the Department of Justice the right of pre-clearance of any substantial change in voting procedures or laws in states that had a history of racial suppression of the vote.

But in the 2013 Supreme Court case of Shelby County vs. Holder, the five person right-wing majority of the Court ruled, in an opinion written Chief Justice John Roberts, that Section 5 was outmoded and unnecessary, and thus a violation of the Constitution.

This breathtaking leap of judicial activism disabled the key enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

Immediately, Republicans across the country began to pass laws designed to constrict the vote, as well as elaborate gerrymanders designed to magnify the effect of white votes. New laws in 21 states made it harder to vote.

New forms of government ID were required – in effect a tax on those – largely elderly people of color – without them. Restrictions were passed to make registration and voting harder, to cut off student participation.

Voting hours were reduced; voting booths cut and made less accessible, and more. Republicans claimed that there were measures to cut down on voter fraud but were unable to demonstrate that there was any voter fraud to worry about.

As President Obama said in April, ““The stark and simple truth is this — the right to vote is threatened today — in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,”

And these laws are having the effect intended. In North Carolina’s tight Senate race in 2014, Republican Tom Tillis beat incumbent Kay Hagen by about 43,000 votes (1.7% of the vote).

Tillis had ushered through the state legislature one of the harshest voter suppression laws, eliminating seven days of early voting (and at least one Sunday of “get your souls to the polls” rallies at African American churches), eliminating same day registration, forcing voters to vote in their own precinct and more.

700,000 voters had voted in the now eliminated early seven-day window in 2012, 200,000 in the 2012 bi-election. 100,000 largely African American voters took advantage of same day registration in 2012. The voters eliminated may well have exceeded the vote margin.

Similarly in Florida, Governor Rick Scott reversed his predecessor’s reforms that allowed former convicts who had served their time to regain the right to vote.

That disenfranchised far more than Scott’s margin over his Democratic opponent. In Florida, an ugly one in three African American men is permanently disenfranchised. This is the new Jim Crow on the march.

Making registration and voting easy and accessible to minorities, students, the elderly, the disabled, the working class isn’t hard. We know what works.

What we witness is simply a continuation of the battle that reached one of its turning points on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

The Voting Rights Act was passed, but the opponents of equal rights never surrendered. They have continued to resist and obstruct. What the film Selma depicts is history, but it is also a call to action – for the struggle for even the basic right to vote in America is still not secure.

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

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4 weeks ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.