Supreme Court voting rights ruling fuels a new push to defend Black representation

A protestor stands outside the South Carolina Statehouse on Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins) 2026-05-15T04:06:39Z ATLANTA (AP) — Same fight. New generation. That’s the mantra of a multiracial group of civil rights leaders and activists organizing opposition to a mostly white conservative alliance dismantling the Voting Rights Act and political districts that allowed Black and other nonwhite voters to choose more of their elected leaders for the last half-century. “We have to respond as quickly as possible,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in an interview. “The real question,” Johnson told The Associated Press, “is how do we as a country really address the effort to shrink us backwards into a 1950s reality?” Johnson’s 117-year-old association, which was at the forefront of legal and legislative fights for Black political rights in the 20th century, is among scores of groups coming together Saturday in Alabama for a rally and tribute to the Civil Rights Movement that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They plan events in Selma, where voting rights advocates were attacked by white law enforcement officers on Bloody Sunday, and Montgomery, where a rescheduled march concluded two weeks later. Unlike 61 years ago, the Alabama events are not the pinnacle of a protracted movement. Instead, civil rights activists hope they serve as a catalyst for a renewed crusade after the U.S. Supreme Court, two weeks ago, further weakened the VRA by no longer allowing race to be considered in how congressional and other districts are drawn. They acknowledge difficulty in countering a white-dominated conservative network entrenched in the White House, Capitol Hill, federal courts and many state legislatures of the Old Confederacy, where a majority of Black Americans still live. (