Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
At Lewis Funeral, Obama Calls for Renewing Voting Rights Act
gvw_ap_news
By Associated Press
Published 4 years ago on
July 31, 2020

Share

ATLANTA — Former President Barack Obama used Rep. John Lewis’ funeral on Thursday to issue a stark warning that the voting rights and equal opportunity the late civil rights icon championed are threatened heading into the 2020 election.
Speaking from the pulpit of the church that Martin Luther King Jr. once led, Obama did not mention President Donald Trump. But the first Black president drew unmistakable contrasts with his successor, and he implicitly lambasted how Trump has handled voting procedures and ongoing civil unrest amid a national reckoning over systemic racism.

Obama called on Congress to renew the Voting Rights Act, which Trump and Republican congressional leaders have left unchanged since the Supreme Court diminished the landmark law in 2012.
Obama called on Congress to renew the Voting Rights Act, which Trump and Republican congressional leaders have left unchanged since the Supreme Court diminished the landmark law in 2012.
“You want to honor John? Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for,” Obama said, arguing that the bipartisan praise for the Georgia congressman since his death isn’t enough.
Obama endorsed ending the Senate filibuster if that is what’s needed to pass an overhauled voting law. He called the procedural hurdle that effectively requires 60 votes to pass major legislation a “Jim Crow relic,” referring to the segregation era.
The Democratic-led House has adopted a sweeping rewrite of the Voting Rights Act, now named for Lewis. It faces opposition in the Republican-led Senate and likely couldn’t get 60 votes even if Democrats reclaim a narrow majority after the November elections.
Specifically, Obama called for all Americans being registered to vote automatically, restoring voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences, expanding early voting, ending partisan gerrymandering of districts and making Election Day a national holiday.
A military honor guard moved the casket of Rep. John Lewis into Ebenezer Baptist Church for his funeral, Thursday, July 30, 2020, in Atlanta. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Hours Before Lewis’ Funeral, Trump Suggested Delaying the November Election

Obama noted that the original Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its renewals drew Republican and Democratic votes in Congress and were signed by presidents from both parties. Obama singled out former President George W. Bush, a Republican, who also spoke Thursday at Ebenezer Baptist Church near downtown Atlanta.
Still, Obama said, “There are those in power doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws … even undermining the Postal Service in an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots.”
Hours before Lewis’ funeral, Trump suggested delaying the November election, something he doesn’t have the authority to do. Trump has falsely claimed that a surge of mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic will threaten the election’s legitimacy. Trump has opposed moves in Congress to help the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service handle the sharp uptick in mail voting.
Obama compared current national circumstances to the earlier civil rights era when Lewis helped lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and became an understudy to King.
“Bull Connor may be gone, but today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans,” Obama said, alluding to the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer. “George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.”
Connor was the Birmingham, Alabama, police commissioner who ordered the use of police dogs and fire hoses against civil rights demonstrators. Wallace, the four-term governor of Lewis’ native Alabama, built his political career on a defense of segregation and overt appeals to white grievances, and it was his state highway patrol who beat Lewis and others as they marched for voting rights in 1965.
Trump, like Wallace in his multiple presidential bids, is campaigning as a “law and order” figure. The president frames protesters who have gathered across the country since Floyd’s killing as anarchists who threaten the nation’s stability, especially in suburbs, and he’s dispatched federal authorities to some cities over the objections of local authorities.

Obama Awarded Lewis the Medal of Freedom in 2011

Lewis, who died July 17 at the age of 80, was one of the original Freedom Riders, activists who challenged segregation on commercial bus lines in the Deep South during the early 1960s. He was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Bloody Sunday and the voting rights marches occurred two years later, months before President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act.

Lewis had called Trump an illegitimate president ahead of his 2017 inauguration and chided him for stoking racial divisions. Trump answered by calling Lewis “all talk, talk, talk (and) no action” and describing his Atlanta congressional district as “crime infested.”
Obama awarded Lewis the Medal of Freedom in 2011.
Trump was the only living president who played no official role in a week of public remembrances for Lewis. Besides Obama and Bush, former President Bill Clinton spoke Thursday at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Former President Jimmy Carter, who is 95, sent a statement read by the church’s senior pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock.
Lewis had called Trump an illegitimate president ahead of his 2017 inauguration and chided him for stoking racial divisions. Trump answered by calling Lewis “all talk, talk, talk (and) no action” and describing his Atlanta congressional district as “crime infested.”
Obama exalted Lewis as a “founding father” of a “better America.”
“Someday, when we do finish that long journey towards freedom, when we do form a more prefect union – whether it’s years from now or decades or even if it takes another two centuries,” he said, “John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America.”

DON'T MISS

SEC Chair Gary Gensler, Who Led US Crackdown on Cryptocurrencies, to Step Down

DON'T MISS

Is Fresno Mobile Home Park Controversy Over? Tenants Applaud Federal Judge’s Ruling

DON'T MISS

Wiggins, Curry Power Warriors to Dominant Win Over Hawks

DON'T MISS

Sale and Skubal Claim Cy Young Awards After Historic Pitching Triple Crown Seasons

DON'T MISS

What Will Happen to CNBC and MSNBC When They No Longer Have a Corporate Connection to NBC News?

DON'T MISS

Bulldogs Stack Double-Doubles Like Burgers on a Plate to Beat Prairie View

DON'T MISS

Bitcoin Is at the Doorstep of $100,000 as Post-Election Rally Rolls On

DON'T MISS

US Regulators Seek to Break Up Google, Forcing Chrome Sale as Part of Monopoly Punishment

DON'T MISS

Wall Street Climbs as Nvidia Swings, Bitcoin Rises and Alphabet Sinks

DON'T MISS

Major Storm Drops Record Rain, Downs Trees in Northern California After Devastation Further North

UP NEXT

Bomb Cyclone Kills 1 and Knocks Out Power to Over Half a Million Homes Across the Northwest US

UP NEXT

Volunteers Came Back to Nonprofits in 2023, After the Pandemic Tanked Participation

UP NEXT

New Study: Proposed Trump Tariffs Could Cost US Consumers $78 Billion a Year

UP NEXT

Riders Stuck in Midair for Over 2 Hours on Knott’s Berry Farm Ride

UP NEXT

Shouting Racial Slurs, Neo-Nazi Marchers Shock Ohio’s Capital

UP NEXT

More Logging Is Proposed to Help Curb Wildfires in the US Pacific Northwest

UP NEXT

Scientists Fear What’s Next for Public Health if RFK Jr. Is Allowed To ‘Go Wild’

UP NEXT

Warren Slams Biden Admin for Failing to Hold Israel Accountable on Gaza Aid

UP NEXT

Suicides in the US Military Increased in 2023, Continuing a Long-Term Trend

UP NEXT

New FDA Rules for TV Drug Ads: Simpler Language and No Distractions

Sale and Skubal Claim Cy Young Awards After Historic Pitching Triple Crown Seasons

48 minutes ago

What Will Happen to CNBC and MSNBC When They No Longer Have a Corporate Connection to NBC News?

53 minutes ago

Bulldogs Stack Double-Doubles Like Burgers on a Plate to Beat Prairie View

56 minutes ago

Bitcoin Is at the Doorstep of $100,000 as Post-Election Rally Rolls On

57 minutes ago

US Regulators Seek to Break Up Google, Forcing Chrome Sale as Part of Monopoly Punishment

1 hour ago

Wall Street Climbs as Nvidia Swings, Bitcoin Rises and Alphabet Sinks

1 hour ago

Major Storm Drops Record Rain, Downs Trees in Northern California After Devastation Further North

1 hour ago

Police Report Reveals Assault Allegations Against Hegseth, Trump’s Pick for Defense Secretary

1 hour ago

Republicans Target Social Sciences to Curb Ideas They Don’t Like

2 hours ago

Gaetz Withdraws as Trump’s Pick for Attorney General

2 hours ago

SEC Chair Gary Gensler, Who Led US Crackdown on Cryptocurrencies, to Step Down

NEW YORK – Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who was aggressive in his oversight of cryptocurrencies, will step d...

2 minutes ago

2 minutes ago

SEC Chair Gary Gensler, Who Led US Crackdown on Cryptocurrencies, to Step Down

11 minutes ago

Is Fresno Mobile Home Park Controversy Over? Tenants Applaud Federal Judge’s Ruling

39 minutes ago

Wiggins, Curry Power Warriors to Dominant Win Over Hawks

48 minutes ago

Sale and Skubal Claim Cy Young Awards After Historic Pitching Triple Crown Seasons

53 minutes ago

What Will Happen to CNBC and MSNBC When They No Longer Have a Corporate Connection to NBC News?

56 minutes ago

Bulldogs Stack Double-Doubles Like Burgers on a Plate to Beat Prairie View

57 minutes ago

Bitcoin Is at the Doorstep of $100,000 as Post-Election Rally Rolls On

1 hour ago

US Regulators Seek to Break Up Google, Forcing Chrome Sale as Part of Monopoly Punishment

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend