The One Credible Voice on Voting Rights

If you want to understand what's really at stake in the Supreme Court's pending reversal of the Voting Rights Act, read John Lewis' autobiography Walking With the Wind.

Remember the pictures in your textbooks? The ones of unarmed, unresisting Americans being beaten nearly to death by white cops in Birmingham for the crime of trying to vote? The short black man in the tan coat bloody and unconscious on the ground? That's John Lewis. He literally almost died for voting rights. More than once.

For the short version, here's Congressman Lewis explaining reality to Antonin Scalia, who should spend the next year on his knees begging Lewis' forgiveness.

Scott Lemieux at LGM:

And, to conclude, genuine hero John Lewis:

Rep. John Lewis attacked Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday, calling comments he made during a Supreme Court argument on the Voting Rights Act “an affront to all of what the civil rights movement stood for.”

Scalia, a member of the court’s conservative wing, was intensely skeptical of the Act during Wednesday’s hearing, labeling its continued existence a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

“It was unreal, unbelievable, almost shocking, for a member of the court to use certain language. I can see politicians and even members of Congress — but it is just appalling to me,” Lewis said on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation.”

“It is an affront to all of what the civil rights movement stood for, what people died for, what people bled for, and those of us who marched across that bridge 48 years ago, we didn’t march for some racial entitlement,” he continued. “We wanted to open up the political process, and let all of the people come in, and it didn’t matter whether they were black or white, Latino, Asian-American or Native American.”

 Watch the video here.