To mark the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Sunday’s New York Times Magazine made North Carolina the focus for a sweeping cover story on the 1965 law and the struggle both to create it and preserve it.
The law signed 50 years ago Thursday outlawed the voter suppression tactics of the Jim Crow era and for minorities opened the doors to the polls and to representation.
The focal point of the article was a Winston-Salem courtroom, where last week a federal judge heard final arguments in what could become a landmark challenge to the state’s 2013 voting law. That law ended same-day voter registration, cut the number of early-voting days and, starting next year, requires voter IDs.
But it’s hard to escape the fact that both sides were fighting over a fundamental right most people won’t exercise, especially this year.