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Congressman David Scott released the following statement in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act: I am pleased to celebrate August 6, 1965, the day President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the historic Voting Rights Act. It and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are two of the most significant civil rights statutes ever enacted. Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect the voting rights of all Americans and ended the techniques that had been used for decades to deny millions of minorities the right to vote. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, those in the civil rights movement worked to get basic civil rights and voting rights enacted into statute. The cost for those in the movement was high: church burnings, bombings, shootings, and beatings. It required the ultimate sacrifice of ordinary Americans: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner who simply sought to register voters and Jimmie Lee Jackson whose death precipitated the famous march from Selma to Montgomery. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, those in the civil rights movement turned their attention to the importance of obtaining voting rights. The struggle for voting rights led non-violent civil rights marchers to gather on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965 – a day that would come to be known as “Bloody Sunday” when the bravery of the marchers was tested by a brutal response, with many marchers being beaten. The Voting Rights Act provided extensive protections by prohibiting any voting practice that serves as an impediment to the right to vote, such as: intimidation, voter harassment, poll taxes, literacy tests, language barriers, racial gerrymandering and other tools of disenfranchisement. It also provided for criminal and civil sanctions against persons interfering with the right to vote. It is clear that the Voting Rights Act has been a great success. Consider the statistics. At the time the Act was adopted, only one-third of all African Americans of voting age were on the registration rolls in the specially covered states, while two-thirds of eligible whites were registered. In some states, fewer than five percent of African Americans were registered. Today, African American voter registration rates are approaching parity with that of whites in many areas, and Hispanic voters in jurisdictions added to the list of those specially covered by the Act in 1975 are not far behind. Also, thanks to the Voting Rights Act, today there are 81 members of Congress of African American, Latino, Asian and Native American descent, and thousands of minorities in elected offices around the country. Despite the progress from 40 years of enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, voter inequities, disparities, and obstacles still remain for far too many minority voters. It is important that we recognize this significant anniversary because The Voting Rights Act is an expression of important American values – equality, nondiscrimination, fairness, and ensuring the full participation in our society by everyone. Therefore, I celebrate this anniversary with pride and reflection knowing that although we have a come a long way, we still have a great distance to go in order to fulfill our nation’s ideals of equality and equal opportunity.