The Rev. Timothy McDonald was a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Perry Elementary School in Brunswick, Georgia, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law. Now, more than six decades later, McDonald and other Georgia faith leaders are watching as the legal protections that transformed Southern politics are systematically dismantled.
Capital B Atlanta reported on a coalition of Black pastors who gathered this week to draw attention to what they see as the erosion of voting rights following the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County decision, which gutted the preclearance requirement that forced states with histories of discrimination to get federal approval before changing election rules.
The pastors pointed to recent redistricting battles in Georgia and other Southern states as evidence that without preclearance, state legislatures can draw maps that dilute Black voting power. Several GOP-led states have moved quickly to redraw congressional districts after a related Supreme Court case earlier this year further narrowed the Voting Rights Act's protections.
McDonald, who leads First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta, told Capital B that the current generation of Black voters may not fully understand what the Voting Rights Act meant for their parents and grandparents. Before its passage, election officials in the South routinely blocked Black citizens from registering through literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright intimidation.
The faith leaders called on Congress to pass new voting rights legislation to restore the protections lost in Shelby County, though such legislation faces long odds in the current political environment.