By Michael Smith - Reflective MVS | August 8, 2025
“It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote…”
— Lyndon B. Johnson, March 15, 1965
Sixty years ago this week, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, calling it “a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield.” The backdrop was Selma. The soundtrack was protest. The demand was simple: stop treating Black votes like trespassers in democracy’s house.
And for a moment—just a moment—we thought we overcame.
But history don’t end just because you passed a law.
🎥 Watch: “The American Promise” Speech (1965)
LBJ’s voice trembled with borrowed conviction when he declared “we shall overcome.” But that promise? It’s still unfulfilled.
🧠 Insights Uncovered: 60 Years Later, We’re Still Fighting for the Ballot
This week should’ve been a celebration. Instead, it’s a red alert.
Because while we mark the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Texas is lighting the whole blueprint on fire.
Republicans in the statehouse are pushing maps that would flip five congressional seats—by slicing up Black and Latino communities like gerrymandered meat.
Democrats, led by the always-unapologetic Rep. Jasmine Crockett, walked out to block the vote. Again. Deuces, they said.
But this isn’t just Texas. It’s Georgia. Alabama. North Carolina. Florida. It’s every state racing to redraw maps and rewrite rules to make it harder for us to vote—then harder still to be heard.
📄 Featured Reports from Reflective MVS:
📥 Download the full PDF
📚 More coming soon:The Legacy of Racialized Labor in America, Reparations, Housing Justice, and the Economics of Voter Suppression.
🗣️ We Didn’t Lose the Right to Vote. They Just Moved the Line.
You don’t need literacy tests and poll taxes when you’ve got voter ID laws, polling place closures, and gerrymandering done with surgical precision.
You don’t need to say the quiet part out loud when you can redraw a district so that Black folks are outnumbered on purpose.
The tools changed. The mission didn’t.
✊🏾 What We’re Demanding Now
Here’s what a real democracy requires:
- Restore the Voting Rights Act with teeth. Bring back preclearance.
- Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and Freedom to Vote Act.
- Ban racial and partisan gerrymandering nationwide.
- Protect Black-majority and Latino-majority districts from strategic erasure.
- Make voter suppression a federal civil rights violation.
This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about power—ours.
🧱 Final Word from Reflective MVS
At Reflective MVS, we don't just write history. We spray it on the walls.
We speak truth with volume, with visuals, with receipts.
This ain't nostalgia. This is a warning. And it’s a reminder:
The fight ain’t over. And neither are we.
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