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D
of prime interest to all the Black delegates but especially the Southerners who will assemble in Miami in July to choose a Democratic nominee will be any attempt at weakening the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

While no one objects to making the act cover the entire United States, there can be no compromise whatever on Section 5 of that Act. Section 5 requires that any changes by the states or their sub-divisions in their voting qualifications or procedures be reviewed and approved by the United States Attorney General.

One could imagine doing away with the Act entirely if the South had changed overnight into a region eager to grant Black citizens equal access to the franchise, but sadly this is not the case; in Georgia alone, there n have been more than 20 complaints of voter discrimination and voter harrassment lodged with the Voter Education Project in half again as many months. It is the Voting Rights Act alone which is reponsible for any moderation in Southern politics; it is responsible for the election of ever 800 Black elected officials in the 1311 Southern States.

But Southern politics must change a great deal more, if the behavior of some of our Democratic candidates [illegible] for the United States is any indication. These men have wrapped themselves in George Wallace's bloody shirt, and have managed to make themselves an indistinquishable mass to the average Georgia voter.

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