The right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.
— U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, Reynolds v. Sims (1964)
In 1965 Congress passed The Voting Rights Act, one of the most effective civil rights laws ever enacted. The Act immediately outlawed the worst Jim Crow laws in the South, such as literacy tests and other devices that kept black citizens out of the voting booth. Then gradually, through court decisions and Congressional amendments, more subtle schemes to disenfranchise minorities fell by the wayside. In Mississippi, for example, black registration rose from 6.7 percent in 1964 to 70.8 percent in 1986. Today, nearly 5,000 African Americans hold elective office across the South.
But in 1993, the tide shifted ominously when the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Shaw v. Reno and struck down a majority minority's voting district in North Carolina as unconstitutional. Since Shaw, the Court has continued to chip away at voting rights. Today, the hard won gains of blacks and other minorities are in danger of being extinguished.
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