During the civil rights movement's struggle against discrimination and voter suppression in Jim Crow America, the Black Church was a source of refuge and resolve. Today, a new wave of voter suppression laws is targeting Black voters, and new generations of Black clergy are bringing their moral authority to a campaign to defend the Black vote.
We need these prophetic voices. The new Jim Crow doesn't look exactly like the old Jim Crow, but it is grounded in the same assault on the dignity, humanity, and citizenship rights of Black Americans. We need our communities' truth-tellers to speak out. Because the new Jim Crow is grounded in layers of lies.
The Big Lie told by former President Donald Trump and his supporters is that he won the 2020 election, but had his victory stolen by corrupt election officials and Black and brown people casting fraudulent votes.
The existence of widespread voter fraud is itself a lie. It has been debunked over and over again. But Republicans in dozens of states are using that lie to justify new restrictive voting rules. They claim to be protecting "election integrity" but they are really trying to make it harder for some Black and brown people to cast a ballot and have it counted.
Right-wing lawmakers feel free to impose discriminatory voting rules thanks to another liethis one told by John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States. He justified the decision of a conservative majority of the Court in 2013 to abolish a key enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act by saying in effect that racial discrimination in voting was a thing of the past.
States from across the old Confederacy proved him wrong, by acting to impose new restrictions on registration and voting. Some went into effect just hours after the Supreme Court gave them the green light.
That was bad enough. But the right wing's voter suppression machinery really kicked into high gear after the 2020 election. Republican lawmakers saw that Black voter turnout helped President Joe Biden win key battleground states. And they vowed not to let that happen again.
Republican lawmakers' strategy for holding onto power is not to reach out to Black voters, but to shut them out. But we won't be shut out. We will push Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, two laws that are needed to overturn the new Jim Crow laws and prevent future restrictions on voting.
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