Five Decades After Selma

Sam Seder with Ari Berman, on how little the local power structure changed in fifty years. And in the national context, how fifty years of Southern Strategy has left Republican politicians unwilling to participate in what once would have been an uncontroversial, bipartisan commemoration.

Berman observes of Selma politics that, after the Voting Rights Act, "you had to get more creative to steal elections." Practice makes perfect; it also helps to put a judiciary in place for killing off the VRA.