State rally marks King day with voting rights message; speakers blast states' voter ID laws

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Thousands commemorating the holiday honouring African-American icon Martin Luther King Jr. Monday outside South Carolina’s state capitol heard a message that wouldn’t have been out of place during the halcyon days of the civil rights movement a half-century ago: the need to protect all citizens’ right to vote.

A similar tone was struck at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King preached from 1960 until he was assassinated in 1968. There and in South Carolina, speakers condemned the voter identification laws they said are meant to suppress black voter turnout.

For most of 13 years in South Carolina, the attention at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual rally has been on the Confederate flag that still waves outside the Statehouse, which critics call a symbol of slavery. But on Monday, the civil rights group shifted the focus to laws requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast ballots, which the group and many other critics say is especially discriminatory toward African-Americans and the poor.

South Carolina’s new law was rejected last month by the U.S. Justice Department, but Gov. Nikki Haley, the first Indian-American woman governor, vowed to fight the federal government in court. At least a half-dozen other states passed similar voter ID laws in 2011.

“This has been quite a faith-testing year. We have seen the greatest attack on voting rights since segregation,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The shift in tactics was also noted by the keynote speaker, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Last month, Holder said the Justice Department was committed to fighting any laws that keep people from the ballot box. He told the crowd he was keenly aware he couldn’t have become the nation’s first African-American attorney general without the blood shed by King and other civil rights pioneers.

“The right to vote is not only the cornerstone of our governance, it is the lifeblood of our democracy. And no force has proved more powerful, or more integral to the success of the great American experiment, than efforts to expand the franchise,” Holder said. “Let me be very, very clear — the arc of American history has bent toward the inclusion, not the exclusion, of more of our fellow citizens in the electoral process. We must ensure that this continues.”

Texas’ new voter ID law is before the Justice Department, which reviews changes in voting laws in nine mostly Southern states because of their history of discriminatory voting practices. Other states that passed such laws in 2011 included Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Similar laws already were on the books in Georgia and Indiana, and they were approved by President George W. Bush’s Justice Department. Indiana’s law, passed in 2005, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

Critics have likened the laws to the tests used to prevent blacks from voting during the civil rights era. Supporters, many of whom are Republicans, say such laws are needed to prevent fraud.

At the Atlanta church where King once preached, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock said some in America disrespect King’s legacy by “cutting off those for whom he died and the principles for which he fought.”

He called voter ID laws an affront to the memory of the civil rights leader.

The King Day rally in South Carolina took place in the shadow of Saturday’s Republican presidential primary.

Jealous made one of the few references to the Republican field during Monday’s rally, saying he was tired of attacks on the movement, such as cuts to education funding.

In Washington, President Barack Obama and his family commemorated the day by helping to build bookshelves in a local school’s library. The president said there was no better way to celebrate King’s life than to spend the day helping others.

Obama’s attorney general ended his speech on a positive note, saying Americans can’t forget the progress this nation has made. After all, the nation elected a black president just 40 years after King was assassinated.

“In the spirit of Dr. King, let us signal to the world that, in America today, the pursuit of a more perfect union lives on,” Holder said. “The march toward the Promised Land goes on, and the belief not merely that we shall overcome, but that, as a nation, we will all come together, continues to push us forward.”

___

Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko in Washington and Errin Haines in Atlanta contributed to this report.