In 1965, a future Georgia congressman was beaten in a voting march on an Alabama bridge, and conflict over voting rights in one South Georgia town turned deadly.
That year, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. The ensuing 48 years have seen great strides for minority participation in the electoral process, including John Lewis' election to Congress.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether that progress is essentially complete, whether it is time to dismantle the act's most powerful --- and intrusive --- element.
Four years ago, the justices hinted that the days could be numbered for Section 5, which requires the federal government to pre-approve voting law changes in states and jurisdictions with a history of blatant racial discrimination, including Georgia.
The case is a potential landmark moment in the nation's racial history. Many in the civil rights community insist suppression of minority voting is alive and well, particularly in the areas covered by Section 5. Those looking for repeal contend that the selectively targeted restriction is unfair and obsolete.
Lewis had just turned 25 in March 1965 when he led a group of 600 voting rights demonstrators, intending to march from Selma, Ala., to the state capital in Montgomery. Crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, they were met with brutality by Alabama state troopers.
The images of gas mask-wearing white troopers beating unarmed black marchers horrified the nation. Just days later President Lyndon Johnson told a joint session of Congress he would send down "a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote."
In August, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Lewis attended the White House ceremony, and inside a frame in his Atlanta home is one of the pens Johnson used to sign the law. Lewis plans to be inside the Supreme Court chamber today.
"I gave a little blood on that bridge, " Lewis said last week. "So it's almost personal to not see a major setback, not see a dagger put in the heart of the act."
Atlanta Journal headlines about the law's signing competed in 1965 with reports from the South Georgia city of Americus, where racially charged protests were simmering close to a boil.
The tensions began in July when four black women were jailed for integrating a Sumter County voting line. That touched off weeks of protests, culminating in the July 28 slaying of 21-year-old Andrew Whatley, who was hit by an apparent stray bullet.
Whatley, who was white, was on his way home from working as a projectionist at the local drive-in. Two black men, Charlie Lee Hopkins and Eddie Lamar, were arrested in the drive-by shooting.
In the week after the killing, hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members paraded through the streets of Americus and work was stopped. The community, in the heart of the Black Belt, seemed ready to erupt.
"Everyone was on edge that summer, " said former Democratic state Sen. George Hooks, who had graduated high school in Americus the year before. "Every day there were hundreds of people protesting on the streets. Parents were telling their teenage girls not to go downtown."
But somehow the protests faded out without ever reach a flash point.
Carl Sanders, a Democrat, was governor of Georgia when Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. But Sanders made little public mention of it at the time, even though he was friendly with Johnson.
"My role as governor was I was going to do whatever it took to prevent Georgia from turning into Alabama, " Sanders told the AJC this month.
Sanders said Georgia didn't experience the same violence as some other Southern states, in part because black leaders in Atlanta were more moderate and practical than other places. As a result, he said, Atlanta grew and prospered into the capital of the South --- even while Georgians elected an avowed segregationist, Lester Maddox, as governor.
Section 2 of the law, known as the "sword, " prohibits any discriminatory voting practices or procedures. It applies nationwide and is the foundation for complaints and lawsuits challenging actions that minorities believe are discriminatory.
Section 5, which is under Supreme Court scrutiny today, is known as the "shield." It demands that certain states and political subdivisions get federal approval for new voting laws and regulations before they go into effect. Such changes can include anything from creating new congressional district lines to moving a polling place.
Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Alaska and parts of seven other states are covered by pre-clearance. States and jurisdictions can apply to get off the list if they have an unblemished record with the Justice Department for 10 years. Sandy Springs used this "bailout" option in 2010.
In 2006 Congress extended the law for a fourth time, adding 25 years by a unanimous vote in the Senate and with an overwhelming majority in the House.
The act proved remarkably effective in expanding the franchise. According to the 2010 census, 63.5 percent of black citizens were registered to vote in Georgia, compared to 62.9 percent of white citizens. Asian-Americans (33.3 percent) and Latinos (39.7 percent) still trailed, but their numbers are increasing.
Four of the state's 14 congressmen are black, and 64 of the 236 members of the Legislature are black, Hispanic or Asian. Nationally, high minority turnout has helped propel the first black president to two terms.
The gains have prompted legal challenges from Georgians who want to get out from under Section 5.
Then-Gov. Sonny Perdue joined a Section 5 challenge that made its way to the Supreme Court in 2009. The provision survived, but Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that "the Act now raises serious constitutional concerns, " which many court-watchers interpret as a sign that Section 5's days are numbered.
The Justice Department has objected to election law changes in Georgia 13 times since 2000. Most recently it rejected a proposal to move local elections in even years in consolidated Augusta-Richmond County from November to July, when black turnout historically drops off far more than white turnout.
In other states, Section 5 also blocked key voting changes ahead of the 2012 elections, including a restrictive Voter ID law in South Carolina and a map of Texas congressional districts.
One of the principal arguments against Section 5 is that the covered jurisdictions are no more apt to discriminate than anywhere else. That is difficult to judge, but University of Michigan professor Ellen Katz analyzed 331 voting rights lawsuits and concluded in 2006 that courts were more likely to uphold discrimination claims in covered areas.
So what would a post-Section 5 world look like? U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Coweta County Republican with long experience in redistricting, said it would not be much different. "You would still be subject to a court challenge (under Section 2), but it would not be basically an automatic thing that it had been in the South, " he said.
But Laughlin McDonald, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union's Atlanta-based Voting Rights Project, said losing the shield would embolden voter suppression schemes. "Retrogression in minority voting strength --- you would see that for sure."
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