posted November 17, 2010 10:24 AM            

JAMES KARALES [1930 –2002]

quote:

---

On August 7, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of legislation in America since the era of Reconstruction. It signaled the victory of a battle that was fought five months earlier in Dallas County, Alabama. On March 25, twenty-five thousand participants— the largest civil rights gathering the South had yet seen—converged on the state capital of Montgomery, concluding a four-day march for voting rights that began in Selma, fifty-four miles away.
James Karales, a photographer for the popular biweekly magazine Look, was sent to illustrate an article covering the march. Titled “Turning Point for the Church,” the piece focused on the involvement of the clergy in the civil rights movement— specifically, the events in Selma that followed the murder of a white minister from the North who had gone down to support voting rights for blacks. Karales’s photograph of this event captured the spirit and determination of civil rights workers during those tense and dangerous times.
As in Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, the participants face human and natural obstacles that stand in the way of heroic action. Karales positioned his camera so that we look up at the train of marchers, who appear to climb some unseen path toward the low, threatening sky as they move resolutely from right to left. As though in defiance of the oncoming storm, four figures at the front of the group march in unison and set a brisk, military pace. In the center of the photograph, the American flag, a symbol of individual freedom and Constitutional rights, is carried by invisible hands beneath a heavy, black thunder cloud that appears ready to break.

In the week before Karales took this iconic picture, two unsuccessful attempts to march on the capital had already been made. On Sunday, March 5, the first activists, recorded by television cameras and still photographers, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge out of Selma. Horrified viewers watched as unarmed marchers, including women and children, were assaulted by Alabama state troopers using tear gas, clubs, and whips. The group turned back battered but undefeated. “Bloody Sunday,” as it became known, only strengthened the movement and increased public support. Ordinary citizens, as well as priests, ministers, nuns, and rabbis who had been called to Selma by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., flocked to join its ranks.
The second attempt—“Turnaround Tuesday”—which Karales had been sent down to cover, was halted at the bridge by Dr. King before anyone was injured. Finally, six days later, the last march began after President Johnson mobilized the National Guard and delivered his voting rights legislation to Congress. At first, Karales’s photograph did not receive much exposure or recognition. He was a quiet man who let his work speak for itself. Born in 1930 to Greek-immigrant parents in Canton, Ohio, Karales trained as a photojournalist at Ohio University and then apprenticed with legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith. He worked for Look magazine from 1960 until the magazine folded in the early 1970s, and covered significant events of that turbulent decade such as the Vietnam War, the work of Dr. King, and the civil rights movement. Of all his photographs, it was those of this last group for which he became known, and his image of the Selma march has become an icon of the civil rights movement. It caught the attention of a broad audience when it appeared in the 1987 award-winning documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, which chronicled the history of the movement and acknowledged the role played by the news media in getting the story to the American public.
Karales’s Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in1965 reveals the strength of conviction demonstrated by hundreds of Americans seeking basic human rights. Transcending its primary function as a record of the event, it tells the story of the desire for freedom that is the shared heritage of all Americans. It is also a testament to Karales’s ability to capture a timeless image from a fleeting moment—one that still haunts the American conscience.

---

*************

quote:

---

Supreme Court upholds core provision of the Voting Rights Act
June 22, 2009

"“In a decision announced this morning, the Supreme Court upheld the 1965 Voting Rights Act – a law that has done more to expand and strengthen our democracy than any other,” said Donna Brazile, who learned first hand as Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, the first election stolen by George W. Bush, mostly by suppressing the Black vote. “It’s good news – but the fight to protect voting rights doesn’t end there. Attacks on this critical law will not stop. And voter suppression tactics will continue to plague our elections.”

Then SNCC leader, now Congressman John Lewis led the first Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights on March 7, 1965, when 600 marchers were attacked by police in riot gear, who fractured Lewis’ skull on a day remembered as Bloody Sunday. Before going to the hospital, Lewis appeared before television cameras demanding intervention by President Johnson, who, eight days later, appeared before a joint session of Congress to demand passage of the Voting Rights Act. It was passed Aug. 3, 1965.

The Court agreed in part with the plaintiff, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 in Austin, Texas, which is backed by a conservative group opposed to the law, ruling that it can apply to opt out of the advance approval requirement in the law, reversing a lower federal court that found it could not, the Associated Press reported.

That requirement applies in 16 mostly Southern states with a history of discrimination in voting; they must get approval prior to making changes in the way they conduct elections.
****

From the AP Justice Clarence Thomas, alone among his colleagues, said he would have resolved the case and held that the provision, known as Section 5, is unconstitutional.

[quote]"The violence, intimidation and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it no longer remains,” Thomas said.

Roberts himself noted that blacks and white now register and turn out to vote in similar numbers and that “blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare.”

He attributed a significant share of the progress to the law itself. “Past success alone, however, is not adequate justification to retain the preclearance requirement,” Roberts said.

Still, the court did not, on Monday, decide that question in what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently described as “perhaps the most important case of the term.”

The Voting Rights Act, first enacted in 1965, opened the polls to millions of black Americans. In 2006, the Republican-controlled Congress overwhelmingly renewed the part of the law which provided for the advance approval requirement for 25 years and President George W. Bush signed it.

The Austin utility district, backed by a conservative group opposed to the law, brought the court challenge.

It said that either it should be allowed to opt out or the entire provision should be declared unconstitutional

---

This case was over a year ago, but this is the first I had read of it, so wanted to share.

In soapbox terms [wry laugh]
this reminds me that we must be vigilant. In the last 10 years freedoms, liberties, and jurisprudence have been under constant attack.