This year’s Juneteenth is a sobering reminder of the irony of American democracy. This newly recognized holiday celebrates the jubilation of Black slaves in Texas realizing that their long-sought freedom had actually become a legal reality two and a half years prior. Their freedom had been declared in the law yet denied in practice. In the time since the Civil War, America has struggled with this paradox — a country founded on the idea of freedom has denied, delayed, or eroded the rights of its Black citizens, especially when it comes to voting.
During the same year that we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, enacted to prohibit discrimination in voting some 100 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Reconstruction Amendments.
The late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis once said, “Freedom is not a state; it is an act.” The long fight for Black voting rights has shown just how far America has fallen short of its founding principle that “all men are created equal.” And the two and a half years of delayed freedom for those Texas slaves has echoed through more than one and a half centuries of a push and pull between a conceptual democracy and one that functions for all.
Our nation was founded on the principles of democratic rights and representation. The Declaration of Independence affirmed that freedom is an inherent human right, and the Constitution set the legal framework. But from the start, freedom and citizenship did not apply to all. Slavery was legal and there were restrictions on voting based on race, gender, and property ownership.
The Declaration grounded government in the “consent of the governed” and proclaimed the “Right of the People” to alter or abolish their government yet did not define who constituted its “People.” Likewise, the Constitution did not explicitly define citizenship, although it did diminish it for Black people by counting slaves as fractions of a person. And when the first citizenship law was enacted in 1790, it limited citizenship to “free white persons.”
Lincoln’s declaration of freedom for the slaves, followed by the 13th Amendment, came 75 years after the Constitution was ratified. Even then, freedom on paper did not mean freedom in practice. The promise of freedom can only be fulfilled through political participation — the formerly enslaved citizens would need to have the same rights as others, including the right to vote. And it would take another century for all Black Americans to receive full voting rights.
The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 effectively gave Black men the right to vote in the South, and historians estimate that more than 700,000 registered to vote during that period. In addition to voting, during Reconstruction, Black men held public office, including in state legislatures and Congress. Yet, Black political participation faced intense resistance. Blacks faced violence, election fraud, voter intimidation, and even assassinations of Black leaders.
The 15th Amendment had guaranteed Black men the right to vote, but in practice, state and local laws, coupled with violence and intimidation, denied that right for decades. After the collapse of Reconstruction, the political rights of Black people were abandoned and no longer protected by the federal government. Black registration and participation fell sharply thereafter, blocked by the Black Codes, white primaries, and other Jim Crow laws.
These limitations persisted until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s ultimately led Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Black voter registration then increased significantly, and once again there was more opportunity for Black representation in Congress.
This progress was the result of activists, courts, legislators, and ordinary citizens advancing democratic inclusion. It reflected America’s long pursuit of freedom and a functioning democracy, but now we are seeing how fragile that victory was. Despite the expansion of political participation ushered in by the Voting Rights Act, Supreme Court decisions since 2013 — Shelby County v. Holder, Rucho v. Common Cause, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, and Louisiana v. Callais — have rolled back the law’s protections for Black citizens.
The Shelby County decision made it possible for jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to change voting rules without first obtaining federal approval. After the ruling, many states enacted restrictive voting laws, such as measures that limit mail voting, early voting, and same-day registration. Brennan Center research shows that the ruling caused an increase in the racial turnout gap.
