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Pamela, our democracy is being put to the test. At times like this, I like to look backward and learn from past generations — past heroes who helped fight to make our country a more perfect union.
We need to revisit the Freedom Riders.
Sixty-five years ago this month, the first Freedom Riders — including my late friend and hero, Rep. John Lewis — boarded a Greyhound bus in D.C. to courageously stand up for civil rights in the Deep South.
They were met with violence: Swept up in arrests and bloody beatings. They anticipated the hate they’d encounter, and they marched forward anyway, all to fight for equal rights under the law.
The freedoms they fought so hard for are the same rights that the United States Supreme Court has significantly undermined by gutting the cornerstone of American civil rights law — the Voting Rights Act.
The Court’s decision has created a pathway for anti-democracy extremists to return us to a time of greater inequality and voter suppression. A time when Black and brown Americans were routinely denied access to power. When citizens did not have equal representation in Congress.
President Obama and I started Redistricting Action because our democracy needs Americans who will follow in the footsteps of those Freedom Riders — who will rise to the occasion and fight to defend and expand our freedoms. That’s what I’m asking you to do today.
In solidarity, especially at times like this,
Eric H. Holder, Jr.
82nd Attorney General of the United States
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