It is important to recognize Dr. Martin Luther King’s work on this special day, especially in these times when an issue that meant so much to him is still being challenged. Dr. King believed that the right to vote was “civil right no. 1.”

He wrote a piece on civil rights and voting that was published in the New York Times in March, 1965. It is a fascinating read that shows us how far we’ve come.

But the events of the last few weeks have shown us we still have a long way to go. The President of the United States and more than 140 of his Republican allies supported nullifying millions of Black and Brown votes.

In that editorial from 55 years ago, Dr. King wrote:

One of the difficult lessons we’ve learned is that you cannot depend on American institutions to function without pressure. Any real change in the status depends on continued creative action to sharpen the conscience of the nation and establish a climate in which even the most recalcitrant elements are forced to admit change is necessary. — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perhaps the ultimate irony on the day we celebrate Dr. King is that a priority of the new Democratically controlled Congress will be to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. It would restore the original 1965 act that was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. According to The Hill:

The bill prevents state legislatures from unilaterally making changes to voting procedures, which they’ve been able to do since the 2013 ruling. In states where voting rights activists were successful in boosting the turnout of voters of color, proposals already exist to have sweeping roll backs of expanded voting rights that many states reluctantly introduced because of the pandemic. 

One of those state is Georgia, where Republicans in the state legislature are angling to curb a slew of voting rights, including no excuse absentee voting which the state has had since 2005. It’s also a state that will make this possible when it elected two Democratic Senators earlier this month.