I am Myrlie Evers. Shortly before he was murdered, my husband Medgar Evers said to me, “Never give up the things you believe in.” Medgar and I had a transcendent relationship, and these words kept my mood during the decades-long struggle for justice against Medgar’s assassins , my time at the NAACP and my candidacy for Congress against a right-wing extremist. These words always guide me when I see things that Medgar fought for and died because they were erased by misguided politicians.
I am Scott Wallace. Nothing inspires me more than the courage of my grandfather Henry A. Wallace, who campaigned for president in the deep south on a platform to end Jim Crow in 1948, unimpressed by death threats. In my lawyer and philanthropy career, I have been guided every day by his fearless commitment to robust and inclusive democracy and an active role in government on behalf of ordinary Americans.
Medgar Evers grew up in Mississippi during the Depression and fought on the beaches of Normandy only to come home to witness grotesque inequality and violence against African Americans. He devoted the rest of his life to fighting for civil rights and voting rights.
Wallace rose from Agriculture Secretary to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third vice-president, but was replaced by Harry Truman on the Democratic ticket in 1944. His demands to abolish election taxes outraged the party bosses. He never gave up fighting for progressive values and international cooperation for world peace.
Today, August 6th, America commemorates the 56th anniversary of the Suffrage Act. But in the face of a relentless attack from the right – not just on who can vote how and who, but who decides which votes count – there is more to mourn than to celebrate.
Almost six decades have passed since Medgar was murdered and Henry A. Wallace died. Our beloved crusades must turn in their graves.
By mid-July, Republican-led parliaments had passed around 30 restrictive new electoral laws in at least 17 states, some of which will disproportionately affect racial minorities. In Texas, more than 50 Democratic MPs fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum to enforce some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country. On threat of arrest, they were in Washington, DC, pushing for new federal law to secure statewide elections.
The US Supreme Court is not helping. Last month it gutted what remains of the voting rights law. That judgment came eight years after the court’s misguided decision to undo the law’s requirement that certain states and counties seek federal permission to make changes to their electoral laws.
President Biden recently condemned the “Jim Crow attack on Sept.
But these bills are going to die. You will be strangled by the Senate filibuster, a parliamentary tactic that requires a three-fifths majority of Senators to end the debate on most of the laws and get them voted. If the Senate were like many other democratic legislatures in the world, it would take a simple majority of 51 votes to pass a law. But while the Democrats have 50 votes today and Vice President Kamala Harris can serve as the 51st vote in a tie, there is little they can do unless 10 Republicans choose to join them.
But the Senate Republicans are not joining them. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Our focus is 100 percent on stopping Mr. Biden’s administration.” He recently led a filibuster to obstruct a House of Representatives bill to protect elections and voting in America.
The crusading spirit of our two loved ones was forged by FDR during the New Deal when the government responded to major crises with big, bold programs to help everyday Americans. FDR’s example openly inspires President Biden. He keeps the portrait of FDR in the place of honor above the fireplace in the Oval Office. Mr Biden likes to say that he says it “straight off the shoulder,” a phrase FDR used when he was president. President Biden has called for the creation of a twenty-first century civilian climate corps modeled on the hugely successful New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps.
FDR passed 15 major laws in its first 100 days. But here’s the big irony: the bills that made up FDR’s New Deal may not have passed under today’s Senate filibuster rules. The Senate filibuster was used to block civil rights laws to combat racial discrimination, such as lynching and election taxes – one reason former President Obama denounced the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic.”
President Biden’s only important bill was only successful because it fitted into a narrow exemption for the filibuster: the budget vote. Other laws passed by the House of Representatives simply die in the Senate. The “talking” filibuster of the New Deal era – a round-the-clock talkathon to dramatize minority opposition – has been replaced by a blanket minority veto against almost every even remotely controversial bill.
So Jim Crow lives on, dressed in a business suit in the state parliaments and in the US Senate. His weapon is the filibuster. And its victims are democracy and justice strengthening laws like the For The People Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act.
The filibuster is not a legal or constitutional creature. It’s a procedural rule. The change process is simple and not unusual. It only takes a majority decision by the Senate to create new exceptions to the requirement for a super majority of the filibusters. Such exceptions were made 161 times between 1969 and 2014.
Washington elected leaders must reform the racist filibuster and stand up for democracy by passing big, bold laws to address the biggest American crises since the 1930s and 40s. We owe it to the present, the future and the past.
Myrlie Evers is NAACP Chair Emeritus and the widow of Medgar Evers. Scott Wallace is a lawyer and the grandson of Henry A. Wallace, the 33rd Vice President of the United States.
The Times strives to publish a wide variety of letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here is our email: [email protected].
Follow the “The New York Times Opinion” section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Comments are closed.