Gary May is a professor of history at the University of Delaware. Winner of the Society of American Historians' Allan Nevins Prize and author of four books, his previous books include The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan and The Murder of Viola Liuzzo. His new book is Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy (Basic Books). The Supreme Court has heard oral arguments challenging Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the "preclearance" provision that requires states with a history of racial discrimination to receive federal permission before making any changes to their voting laws. This provision was crucial during this year's presidential election and prevented the passage of voter identification laws in Texas and South Carolina. The ruling is expected in June. Attorney General Eric Holder recently vowed to enforce federal voting rights laws aggressively no matter what the Supreme Court decides this year.

Your book is a study of the history of the Voting Rights Act, and also ventures into consideration of the Act's role in today's democracy. In what ways do you think we can look to the past as a predictor of the future?

It is always risky to use the past as a predictor of the future because historical events rarely repeat themselves precisely. Nevertheless, if one sees the past as part of a continuum from which the present and the future flow, there are lessons that can help us avoid a darker future if we do not repeat past mistakes.

For example, there is the lesson derived from the struggle to create the 1965 Voting Rights Act. For the first 65 years of the 20th century, African-Americans fought for the right to vote, which the Constitution had guaranteed them in its 14th and 15th amendments. Unwilling to accept racial equality, Southern state governments ignored these legal protections, blocking black efforts to vote with a variety of devices--literacy tests and poll taxes, as well as intimidation and violence. And yet African-Americans persevered. They marched on county courthouses, protested nonviolently, received beatings from local police and went to jail.

In Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965--a day remembered as Bloody Sunday--they endured a brutal attack from state troopers and vigilantes. That event touched the conscience of the nation, forcing President Lyndon B. Johnson to place a voting rights bill at the forefront of his political agenda. Its passage permitted millions of African- Americans to vote in Alabama and elsewhere in the South. The Voting Rights Act transformed American democracy and was the last act of emancipation, a process Abraham Lincoln began in 1863.

Today, the Voting Rights Act, whose temporary provisions have been renewed four times since its original passage and endorsed by recent Republican presidents, is facing its greatest challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court. Lawyers for Shelby County, Ala., told the Court on February 27, 2013, that the Act's most potent provision--Section 5, which requires states with the worst records of voter suppression to submit any future changes to the Justice Department--is no longer necessary in an age when African-Americans vote freely in the 16 states covered in whole or in part by the Act. Given a court sharply divided between liberal supporters and conservative critics of the Act, we may soon see the Act so weakened that it will no longer provide the protection minority votes have long needed and still require.

America is quickly evolving into a new, multiracial and multi-ethnic society. Since 2000, the African-American population has grown 12%, while Asian-Americans and Hispanics increased their numbers by an extraordinary 43%. 96% of African-American voters joined 70% of Latinos and 73% of Asian-Americans to support the reelection of America's first African-American president in 2012, despite new efforts to suppress that vote. Those efforts--voter IDs, fewer voting hours, restrictions on registering new voters--are likely to continue, indeed, even intensify. At the same time, following the election, media spokesmen for the predominately Caucasian "old America" expressed their strong opposition to what was happening to the country. While it is unlikely that unhappy Southern students will march on Washington, expressions of disrespect directed at the president, an increase in hostility toward African-Americans in general and, most important, efforts at voter suppression to dilute the political power recently displayed by minority voters will likely continue.

Where did the title of this book come from?

Choosing the right title is often a difficult task. You want something that captures the essence of the story you've told but is also interesting enough to attract a reader's attention as they wander through a bookstore. Bending Toward Justice was the original working title of the manuscript. A dozen others were later suggested by the editorial and sales team at Basic Books, but eventually everyone agreed that the original choice worked best.

The words "bending toward justice" originated in a speech delivered to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Convention in 1858 by Theodore Parker, a noted clergyman and abolitionist: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe," Parker declared; "The arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience and from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice."

Martin Luther King, Jr. revised the quotation and often used it in speeches and sermons, most famously in Montgomery, Ala., at the conclusion of the historic Voting Rights March on March 25, 1965: "How long must justice be crucified and truth buried?" King asked the crowd of 20,000 supporters. "How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long, not long, because you still reap what you sow. How long? Not long because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

The King-Parker phrase is also said to be Barack Obama's "favorite quotation" and became a much-used refrain during the 2008 presidential campaign. But Obama altered it to reflect his experience as a community organizer, making it even more relevant for our time: "Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.... [B]ut here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice...." And when President Obama moved into the White House, that quotation, along with others from FDR and JFK, was woven into a large rug that now adorns the Oval Office.

It therefore seemed to me fitting that the words of a 19th-century abolitionist, a 20th-century preacher and a 21st-century African-American president should become the title of a history of the greatest achievement of the modern civil rights movement--the Voting Rights Act. --Matthew Tiffany, counselor, writer for Condalmo

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