When John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other civil rights activists defied tear gas and police beatings to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, they were marching for a voting rights act and against white Southerners who routinely resorted to violence, including bombings and murder, to ensure only white people would be in control of politics — even in majority-Black towns such as Selma.
The president will be speaking in Selma as the political kin of those who made “Bloody Sunday” bloody employ legal maneuvers to control majority-Black cities.
When President Joe Biden visits Selma on Sunday, to commemorate what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” we shouldn’t think of him making just a typical nod to history. Because the president will be speaking in Selma as the political kin of those who made “Bloody Sunday” bloody employ legal maneuvers to control majority-Black cities.
They can’t totally stop Black people from voting, so they’ve decided to grant themselves the authority to render meaningless the choices Black voters make at the ballot box. The new strategy is to strip decision-making power away from the majority-Black residents of urban areas and give it to unelected white overlords from out of town.
Mississippi’s mostly white and mostly Republican Legislature is proposing to give Mississippi Capitol Police, which doesn’t answer to Jackson city officials, jurisdiction throughout the entire majority Black, majority Democratic city. In Missouri, the majority white and majority Republican Legislature is trying to use a Civil War-era law to take St. Louis’ police force away from the city and put it under state control. And in Washington, D.C., the Republican-controlled U.S. House has voted to block the Washington City Council’s decision to update its crime code, an update that lowers maximum sentences for crimes that include carjacking and gun possession.
While he’s in Selma, Biden is…
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