Tonight’s opening segment on the history of the Voting Rights Act included a few elements that are worth singling out.
Here’s LBJ’s speech to Congress supporting the Voting Rights Act, for example. YouTube offers an abbreviated version, but the full thing runs over 45 minutes:
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a similarly full version of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech in Montgomery. YouTube gives us the last (most famous) couple of minutes, but if you look at the text, you’ll see he had quite a bit more to say before he got to the “How long? Not long” part.
Lastly, here is tonight’s graphic summarizing the overwhelming support for the repeated renewal of the Voting Rights Act:
