The American Promise: The Right to Vote

Unfortunately, it is exactly what the Republican party is doing. They are denying people the right to vote. The Voter ID laws that are being put in place all across this country are unbelievable. Alabama Congressmen are justifying their new Voter ID law based on three cases out of three years. And these cases were not even voter fraud cases. We must stay vigilant!!!

Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right... The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.


—President Lyndon Johnson, “The American Promise,” March 15, 1965

These words are from the well-known televised address President Johnson gave before a joint session of Congress urging members to move forward without delay on what would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The speech and legislation came after the entire nation had spent days transfixed by events in Alabama. On March 7, 1965, John Lewis and Rev. Hosea Williams set out with a group of 600 on a planned 50-mile peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery. Instead, state troopers brutally attacked the nonviolent protestors on the first day at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The televised images of “Bloody Sunday” and the injured marchers—including Lewis, whose skull was fractured—were a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. They roused great sympathy for the protesters and reminded all Americans that these marchers had to put their lives on the line for what should have been considered a basic American right: the right to vote.

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