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May 1, 2026 
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Despite the 15th Amendment, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting in 1870, Black Americans continued to face barriers to one of the nation’s most fundamental rights. For many decades before the Voting Rights Act was passed, activists marched, protested and organized voter registration campaigns. Some were brutally beaten or murdered.
The act required some state and local governments, mostly in the South, to get federal approval before changing their voting laws. It also prohibited election or voting practices that discriminated based on race, leading some states to redraw congressional maps with districts that have a majority of Black voters.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has chipped away at the federal law and its enforcement tools. On Wednesday, the court, which has a conservative majority, dealt another blow to the historic legislation by throwing out Louisiana’s latest congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
