Back to Selma, Back to Fighting for Rights

As a child, when I learned about the Civil Rights Movement, of course it was the whitewashed, sanitized version, the one wrapped in patriotic language and propaganda approved by both state and federal hands. The version designed to make America look heroic and redeemed, instead of honest about the violence Black people endured simply for wanting to exist as equal human beings.

I remember being both intrigued and confused by the whole premise because, what do you mean Black and Brown people had to fight just to have the same rights as white people? What do you mean people were beaten, attacked by dogs, sprayed with fire hoses, denied the right to vote, denied access to schools, neighborhoods, restaurants, and basic dignity? Even as a kid, something about it felt impossible to fully process.

Then I got older, and I learned the real history. Or at least some of it. Enough to understand the horrors people lived through when they weren’t considered fully human by the people in power. Enough to understand that segregation wasn’t some ancient history buried hundreds of years ago. There are people still alive today who lived through Jim Crow. People still alive who remember whites only signs, segregated schools, lynchings, voter suppression, and the daily fear that came with simply existing while Black in America.

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash.

The truth is, I am still learning to this day about the brutality of slavery, the South, Jim Crow laws, redlining, and the way whiteness was weaponized against anyone who did not fit their preferred shade of acceptable.

And honestly? The more I learn, the angrier I become.

Because once you understand the history, you start recognizing the patterns repeating themselves in real time.

You see it in the attacks on education. In the banning of books. In the rewriting of history. In the demonization of diversity and inclusion. In the way people scream about “states rights” while quietly targeting the rights of Black and Brown communities yet again.

So when the Supreme Court essentially opened the door for gerrymandering to continue unchecked, of course several southern states wasted no time redrawing maps in their favor. Of course they scrambled to dilute Black voting power and protect their political control before midterms could threaten it in any meaningful way.

Because voter suppression never actually disappeared. It just fucking evolved.

The tactics changed. The language became more polished. The racism became coded instead of openly broadcasted on television. But the goal remains the same: maintaining power by limiting whose voices count.

And the people engineering these tactics are not young. They are not ignorant of the history. Many of them were alive when the Civil Rights Act passed. Some of them were in rooms where those decisions were made, or at least old enough to understand exactly what was being fought for and why it mattered. They watched it happen. They saw the marches. They heard the speeches. They knew what it cost people to get those protections into law.

And then they spent decades waiting for the moment they could dismantle it all.

Lying their way into office. Packing courts. Accepting money from people who should be in prison. Building a pipeline of judges and politicians loyal not to the Constitution but to the consolidation of white conservative power. And now here we are, watching the fruits of that long, patient, deliberate project play out in real time, while people are still arguing about whether any of this is really as bad as it looks.

It is. It’s exactly as bad as it looks.

That reality hit me hard when I saw a video about a march happening in Alabama on May 16th.

The premise is both heartbreaking and necessary. A march to fight back for voting rights.

The NAACP and more than 90 civil rights, labor, religious, and community organizations are coming together in Selma and Montgomery to organize, mobilize, and build power for the future in direct response to the Supreme Court’s damaging decision in Louisiana v. Callais and the growing attacks on fair representation throughout the South.

Selma.

A place forever tied to Bloody Sunday and the violent fight for voting rights in 1965.

And now, sixty years later, people are still marching for those same rights.

I never thought in my lifetime there would need to be another major march for voting rights again. Maybe that sounds naive, but I genuinely believed we were supposed to be moving forward, not watching history circle back around in real time.

But this timeline has made one thing painfully clear: progress is never guaranteed.

Rights can be stripped away. History can be rewritten. Protections can be dismantled piece by piece while people argue over semantics and pretend not to see what’s happening.

And the people who warned us this could happen were never overreacting.

They were paying attention.

Paying attention to the fact that there has always been a portion of this country deeply uncomfortable with the idea of equality unless it only applies to certain people. Paying attention to the way voting rights, civil rights, and access to power are constantly treated as conditional for Black and Brown communities.

Because fundamentally, this should not still be a fight.

People should not still have to march, organize, and beg to protect rights that are supposed to belong to every citizen in this country, not just the white ones.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash.

And yet, here we are again. Watching people return to Selma in 2026 for the same reason they marched there in 1965.

That alone should horrify all of us.