Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006

FANNIE LOU HAMER, ROSA PARKS, AND CORETTA SCOTT KING VOTING RIGHTS ACT REAUTHORIZATION AND AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - July 13, 2006)

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Mr. JEFFERSON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the passage of the Voting Rights Act is informed by past history, by recent events and by current needs.

As one who grew up, watched his mother in 1963 study and struggle to try and pass the literacy test there, which she had to try and remember as best she could the Presidents in order, to recite the Preamble to the Constitution, and to compute her age to the year, the month and the day, as one who witnessed that, you know how important this act was to folks back then and how the legacy of discrimination still obtains in our present provisions today.

When you see our State legislature in Louisiana every year pass election laws that are discriminatory, that meet objections by the Justice Department, you know the need for this act continues.

As we just saw with Hurricane Katrina, so many of our people, displaced back home, who struggled to get back and to have their right to vote expressed and who met objection at almost every corner of that being done, you know the need for this act continues.

So I urge my colleagues to vote to support this act, without amendments, and get it passed now because the struggle does continue.

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