If you’re interested in sharing your opinion on any cultural, political or personal topic, create an account here and check out our how-to post to learn more. Opinions are the writer’s own and not those of Blavity's. ____ Exactly 56 years ago, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, finally prohibiting racially discriminatory voting laws, like poll taxes and literacy tests, nearly a century after the ratification of the 15th amendment. But only a year before its passage, President Johnson told my late father-in-law, Dr. King, that voting rights would have to wait — he said he’d spent all his political power and currency on the Civil Rights Act. But Dr. King did not wait. With a relentless coalition of nonviolent resistance leaders, Dr. King resolved to go back to the South and build the power and movement needed to secure voting rights. Dr. King and the movement leaders of that era understood something I would learn first-hand years later working...
