Aug. 6, 2013. U.S. Senator Kay Hagan released the following statement today on the 48thanniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act into law:
“In 1965, just one week after police officers attacked hundreds of Americans who marched in Selma for equal rights, President Johnson pressed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act when he said, ‘there is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right’ to vote. Nearly 50 years later, thanks to the Voting Rights Act, our country has come a long way to fulfill that duty. But unfortunately, injustice remains and threats to the right to vote still exist, and I am discouraged that the Supreme Court’s recent decision effectively gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act.
“We must look no further than our own state to witness efforts to limit voter access. Instead of making this most crucial right more available, a new law in North Carolina will erase a week of early voting, end same-day registration, and eliminate pre-registration for high schoolers all while expanding the way political parties can use corporate money. Every citizen in North Carolina deserves an equal opportunity to participate in the democratic process and make his or her voice heard, and I will continue to advocate for honest and just elections.”
Earlier this year, Hagan served as co-leader of the Faith and Politics Institute’s 13th Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage in Alabama. She was part of a bipartisan delegation of Members of Congress, religious leaders and civil rights leaders including Congressman John Lewis, an original Freedom Rider. The three-day journey through important milestones in the civil rights movement concluded in Selma as the delegation reenacted the March 7, 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge known as “Bloody Sunday.”
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