Today is the first session of the Inside Scoop to be heard syndicated nationwide as part of the Leslie Marshall show.

Perhaps the greatest single piece of legislation in American history, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was declared unconstitutional today by a one-vote margin in the Supreme Court. The Voting Rights Act singlehandedly ended Jim Crow in America and ensured that finally, 100 years after the Civil War, African-Americans would have the same opportunity to vote as whites, just as the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution passed right after the Civil War guaranteed. The Supreme Court left African Americans with the opportunity to sue only after a racist election occurs and not in advance to stop things like literacy tests and white primaries…or required identification cards only provided to citizens who live in white areas of the State.

The five right-wing Justices ensured that Southern States — and other racist jurisdictions — can now disenfranchise African Americans with impunity all over again. They did this despite the fact that Congress expressly found that racism and intentional racist voting laws continue to exist, including in the very county in Alabama that sued for the right to discriminate against Blacks.

Racists won the right to reinstate Jim Crow today. And Martin Luther King Jr. is turning over in his grave.

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