Montgomery and Selma were pivotal in the mass Civil Rights Movement between 1955 and 1965 where boycotts and mass demonstrations were utilized to break down legalized segregation and disenfranchisement
After the devastating impact of the United States Supreme Court Louisiana v. Callais case which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, several southern states immediately began to redistrict their Congressional maps in order to render the African American vote meaningless.
Tennessee was the first to redraw the 9th district with the sole intention of nullifying the political impact of African American voters principally in Memphis, a municipality with more than a 63% Black population.
Over the weekend of May 16-17, thousands of people gathered in Montgomery and Selma to rally in opposition to the administration of President Donald Trump, who during his first term of office, had placed two additional right-wing members on the Supreme Court providing a 6-3 majority. This court has handed down several decisions which have negatively impacted the gains made by African Americans and women over the last 72 years.
Memphis was the location where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, amid a sanitation strike of African American workers which gained the support of the broader community both locally and nationally. The strike sought collective bargaining rights through the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
The trajectory from the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 to the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965 represented the progress of the mass Civil Rights Movement. Several factors were important in the emergence of the struggles to end segregation and the denial of voting rights which included the international atmosphere characterized by the anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia as well as the rise of socialism in various geo-political regions globally.
Today the current MAGA Republican administration has embarked upon a war drive against the people of West Asia, Africa and Latin America aimed at the seizure of natural resources and the political control of these regions. Assistance to underdeveloped states have been largely abandoned while the tariffs unilaterally imposed by Trump have been declared by the same Supreme Court as being unconstitutional.
At the same time the European allies of Washington are being pressured by the administration to spend more of their national budgets on defense negatively impacting the economic situation in other capitalist states. Despite the efforts to maintain good relations with the U.S., the other NATO countries refused to become directly involved in the unprovoked war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Trump has proposed a $1.5 Trillion defense budget as the prices for consumer goods and energy are continuing to rise sharply. African Americans and other oppressed groups in the U.S. are disproportionately affected by the inflationary spiral in which the administration has dismissed claiming that it is more important to undermine the Iranian government and the entire axis of resistance in West Asia.
It is quite obvious that the MAGA rulers are thoroughly committed to a reconfiguration of racial capitalism and imperialism. The democratic rights of people living in the U.S. are expendable as Trump and his backers within the ruling class seek to salvage a declining system.
Source: Global Research
