Supreme Court Guts Voting Rights Act
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court in June 2013 gutted what many consider perhaps the most successful piece of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act had required federal review of new voting rules in 15 states, most of them in the South. In Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts voted to gut the law on the basis that “our country has changed,” and that blanket federal protection wasn’t needed to stop discrimination. Justice Ruth Ginsburg warned that getting rid of the measure was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” After the decision, states across the nation with Republican-controlled legislatures like Texas and North Carolina almost immediately began passing new voting restrictions.
Assata Shakur Labeled a Terrorist
In May 2013, the FBI decided to put the 65-year-old grandmother, Assata Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, on its Most Wanted Terrorist list — the first woman to make the list of top terrorists. Shakur, the step-aunt of rapper Tupac Shakur (her brother was Tupac’s stepfather), for decades has been a despised figure in law enforcement circles, where she is seen as a dangerous cop-killer and terrorist. But to many Blacks, Shakur is a hero for standing up to law enforcement while she was a leader of the Black Liberation Army in the 1970s and for her forceful writings and commentary on the conditions of Black people after she fled to Cuba sometime around 1984. She has been the subject of films, documentaries and rap songs over the years. Under questionable evidence, Shakur was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973 and became an underground legend in 1979 after she made a daring escape from prison — with the help of accomplices who took two guards hostage — and fled to Cuba, where she has been living in exile the last 30 years.
