I have written this piece for the National Constitution Center’s Constitution Daily.  It begins:

Fifty years ago this week, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in the United States. The Act immediately boosted the voter registration rates of African-American voters in the South, who suffered decades of official discrimination in voting well after the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which legally barred such discrimination. Later, as the federal government enforced the Act, and as Congress repeatedly renewed and strengthened it, the number of minority elected officials soared, and turnout rates continued to grow. Today, however, as some states pass new, restrictive voting laws, the Act’s continued vitality and relevance is in serious question, as the Supreme Court cuts back on the Act and as Congress fails to respond.