Ari Berman Quotes

The unfortunate reality is that, even today, too many citizens have reason to fear that their right to vote, their access to the ballot--and their ability to have their votes counted--is under threat." --Eric Holder, quoted in Give Us the Ballot

Well, what the hell's the presidency for?

Daddy, why are we going to the Capitol?" she asked her father. "Luci Baines, we have to go to the Capitol," Johnson said to his daughter. "It's the only place to go. As a result of this great legislation becoming the law of the land, there will be many men and women who will not be returning to these hallowed halls because of the decision they have made to support it. And because of this great legislation that I will be signing into law, there will be many men and women who will have an opportunity to come to the halls of Congress who could have never have come otherwise.

In the general election, Nixon refined Goldwater's southern strategy. Unlike Goldwater, who "ran as a racist candidate," Nixon said, the 1968 GOP nominee campaigned on racial themes without explicitly mentioning race. "Law and order" replaced "states' rights." Pledging to weaken the enforcement of civil rights laws replaced outright opposition to them. Nixon "always couched his views in such a way that a citizen could avoid admitting to himself that he was attracted by a racist appeal," said his top aide, John Ehrlichman.

It would be written in the history books," Luci Baines Johnson said. "But now the history had to be made.

The Dallas Times Herald ran a cartoon mocking the [Reagan] administration's position. "We don't oppose the extension of the Voting Rights Act ... but we think the test of discrimination should be intent not effect," a fictional Smith said at a press conference. "Won't that cripple enforcement of the Act?" a reporter asked. "That is not our intent," Smith responded.