WASHINGTON — Shirley Lee traveled nearly 1,500 miles from Houston to the nation’s capital. Wearing a cowboy hat emblazoned with an American flag, she said that she wasn’t going to miss this year’s March on Washington.
“It’s my 70th birthday on Sunday, so [being here] is my birthday present to me,” Lee told Capital B.
She brought her grandchildren to the 50th anniversary march, and knew that she needed to return for the 63rd anniversary on Friday.
“I feel like we have to be here,” she said, her voice brimming with excitement as she stood next to her friend. “And this is a brand new day, but we’re dealing with the same problems all over again. So this is where we stand and tell them that we are American.”
The gathering came at a fraught moment for Black voting power.
Friday marked four months since the U.S. Supreme Court further eroded the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the Civil Rights Movement’s chief triumphs. Since then, Republican lawmakers in the South have redrawn maps in ways that dilute Black voters’ ability to elect their preferred candidates, and the Trump administration has sought to restrict mail voting.
The Rev. Al Sharpton saw this year’s march as a beginning, not an end.
Carrying signs declaring “No Kings” and “We Want Equality,” thousands braved the heat to gather at the Lincoln Memorial to “Defend the Vote.” Sharpton, one of the event’s organizers, told protesters that he wanted them to walk away with more than the memory of a demonstration. He wanted them to channel their anger over the state of voting rights into a sustained campaign.
“If we fight, we can win. If we don’t fight, we’re guaranteed to lose,” Sharpton told Capital B.
Sharpton said that march organizers plan to assign volunteers to safeguard voting sites, including by documenting potential interference, and that he intends to tour the South to train what he calls “civil rights voter brigades” ahead of the November elections. The longer-term goal, he said, is to elect a Congress that can pass new federal voting rights protections after the Supreme Court “shot a bullet in the heart of voting rights.”
That urgency is particularly acute in the South. On Aug. 6 — the same day that the country commemorated the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act — Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson won the Democratic nomination for the state’s 9th Congressional District.
Pearson rose to prominence in 2023 following his expulsion from the Tennessee House of Representatives for calling for gun control measures. In May, state Republicans carved up the majority-Black Memphis district, a move that Pearson, who backed the march though he wasn’t there, called “Black political deprivation.” He’ll face Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor in November. Taylor has defended the new map, saying that it “has created an opportunity to deliver another strong Republican voice” to Washington.
“This isn’t about a flash-in-the-pan moment where we’re seeing how under siege we are,” Pearson told Capital B, referring to the march. “It’s about reminding everyone that we can never get comfortable in a country that won’t stop its worst impulses of trying to strip away our humanity.”
That sense of purpose was thick in the Washington air on Friday. Though marchers hailed from across the U.S. and spanned different generations, they arrived with the same demand: that the country make good on its promise of a fundamental right to vote.
Jeremiah Woods, 21, Tampa, Florida
“[As Florida president of Voters of Tomorrow], I believe that what’s happening around the country right now is inhumane and that the only way we’re going to be able to fight back is by showing that the American people are united. Florida, for some reason, has been successful at stripping voting rights from certain groups of people.
“History repeats itself, and young people have always been the drivers of rights movements — of any movement that requires hands-on, boots-on-the-ground action.
“Gen Z has probably been one of the more vocal groups. When we were younger, we were most vocal on social media and things like that. But now we have an opportunity to actually be changers in the game.”
Krysta Jones, 47, Arlington, Virginia
“I’m a proud member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc., and today is really important because there’s just so much going on — so many challenges we’re facing — and I really want to hear from the speakers about how we can do things a little differently.
“It’s easy to do the same thing and not want to change when you feel like problems are arising in our communities and in our society. But we’re in a new age — and we have to do things differently.
“I’m hoping that we can galvanize our community at this moment and leave today with a new plan and a new energy for confronting these problems.”
Nyreisha Tevis, 25, Toledo, Ohio
“This is the first time I’ve ever been to something like this, and this is right up my alley. I just want to experience this kind of experience.
“I also love the history behind the March on Washington and the things that it’s done for the labor movement and causes of that sort.
“There’s just too much on the table, and we can’t be comfortable with where our society is right now. We got a lot of Black families struggling. I’m a case manager, and the amount of people impacted by everything going on with the “Big Beautiful Bill” — it’s just disgusting.
“As young people, we sometimes think that the fight is not our fight. It is our fight. Everything that’s going on — whether it’s with migrants or Black people or Indigenous people — is our fight, and we just got to stick together.”
Zakai Goode, 20, Albany, New York
“This is my very first march. I’m a junior at the University at Albany, and I’m here with the University at Albany chapter of the NAACP.
“I’m here freedom-fighting for all the people who need it and against all the injustices being done by this administration.”
