Defend the Voting Rights Act! - Poster of the Week
- politicalgraphics
- May 8
- 3 min read
Free at Last?
Chaz Maviyane-Davies
Digital Print, 2026
Cambridge, MA
Fannie Lou Hamer - The Woman Who Changed the South
TABS: Aids for ending Sexism in Schools
Offset, 1979
Brooklyn, NY
Poster text: "Those who heard her cannot doubt that, as a speaker with an awesome combination of focused intelligence and vision, she alone was in a class with Martin Luther King, Jr." -- Eleanor Holmes Norton Fannie Lou Hamer The Woman Who Changed the South Copyright © 1979 Tabs: Aids for Ending Sexism in School. Posters are featured in every issue of TABS, a quarterly journal - 744 Carroll St., #1D, Brooklyn, NY 11215.
CELEBRATING THE DREAM
In August 2025, CSPG shared a Poster of the Week celebrating 60 years of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) and discussing how the Civil Rights Movement led to its creation. The VRA outlawed discriminatory practices such as literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, and racist gerrymandering of congressional districts.
Instrumental leaders, like Fannie Lou Hamer, put their lives on the line to bring justice to disenfranchised Black Americans. For her activism, Hamer was jailed, beaten by police resulting in permanent injury, and her family was kicked off the plantation she worked on as a sharecropper. Nevertheless, she dedicated herself to poverty relief for the Mississippi Delta’s poorest residents. She led citizenship training programs. She helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) which challenged the pro-segregationist Democratic Party in the 1964 primaries. She fundraised, rallied, and registered voters until her death in 1977.
“Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.”
-Fannie Lou Hamer
By the end of 1965, 250,000 new Black voters had been registered. In Mississippi alone, the percentage of Black adults as registered voters increased from less than 7% in 1964 to 59% in 1967.
The VRA is one of the most singularly effective pieces of legislation on civil rights ever made into law. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, however, it has been effectively gutted.
DESTROYING THE DREAM
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court declared that the VRA’s provision requiring federal preclearance for any changes to voting laws in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination as unconstitutional. By 2018, nearly 1,000 polling places had closed, primarily in majority Black counties.
In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Supreme Court determined that federal courts cannot review allegations of partisan gerrymandering.
In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), the Supreme Court narrowed future interpretations of the VRA by implementing “guideposts” of best practices. Dissenters anticipated that the decision would make it harder to prevent voter discrimination.
THE FIGHT CONTINUES
Last week, in Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Supreme Court issued a decision that has effectively razed Section 2 of the VRA. The Court determined that Louisiana’s congressional district map that was designed to create a second majority-Black district, “relied too heavily on race.” Louisiana has the fifth largest overall Black population amongst U.S. states–33% according to the 2020 census. Louisiana has 6 congressional districts; creating a map that would accurately reflect the state’s demographics is democratic.
The Louisiana decision is a devastating blow to voting rights. Tennessee lawmakers have already redrawn, voted on, and passed a new congressional map that would carve up Memphis--a majority Black city that currently is represented by the only Democrat amongst Tennessee eight U.S. representatives. Of Tennessee's registered voters, 18% are Democrats and 48% are Independents/Other; only one third of the state's voters are Republicans, yet the state legislature just ensured that only Republican lawmakers will represent Tennessee.
Voters of color could face the elimination of representatives across the country, starting this year. We must take action to prevent returning to levels of voter suppression not seen in 60+ years. Progressive voices must not be silenced! Communities of color must not be silenced! We cannot allow bad faith gerrymandering to silence us!
Educate! Organize! Demonstrate!
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