Some Black Southerners Say Voting Rights Ruling ‘Missed the Mark’

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Some Black Southerners Say Voting Rights Ruling ‘Missed the Mark’

Veterans of the civil rights movement and others said the Supreme Court decision felt like a bleak end to decades of gains in Black representation in the region.

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A commemoration of the 1965 voting rights march known as Bloody Sunday for the violence inflicted upon activists. “I just never in my wildest imagination ever dreamed that we would be, in 2026, where we are now, based on what happened in 1965,” said Dr. Leslie B. McLemore, 85.

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Rita Harper for The New York Times

By

Audra D. S. Burch

and

Emily Cochrane

Audra D.S. Burch reported from Hollywood, Fla., and Emily Cochrane from Nashville.

April 30, 2026,

5:04 a.m. ET

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Dr. Leslie B. McLemore remembers the fear that simmered in the air as he went door to door as a young college student working to register Black voters in rural Mississippi in the early 1960s. The threats. The gun brandished in his face by a patrol officer along a highway.

It made the celebration even more joyful as he joined other students crowding around a television when the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965. On Wednesday, he grappled with different emotions after the Supreme Court dealt it its latest blow.

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The Voting Rights Act passed into law in 1965.

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Associated Press

“I just never in my wildest imagination ever dreamed that we would be, in 2026, where we are now, based on what happened in 1965,” said Dr. McLemore, 85, one of the few surviving veterans of the civil rights movement. “It’s a historic, sad day.”

Given the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and other rulings that had chipped away at the Voting Rights Act over the years, Wednesday’s decision did not entirely surprise voting rights groups or Black leaders across the South, where the landmark law has led states to create several majority-Black voting districts.

But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in writing for the majority, took some aback with his assertion that the nation had undergone “vast social change” since the law’s passage. He pointed in part to increased voter registration and turnout by minorities.

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