The Civil-Rights Era Ended Today

June 25 (Bloomberg) -- The civil-rights era ended today --or at least that’s what the historians will say about the U.S.Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision to strike down Section 4 of theVoting Rights Act of 1965 as unconstitutional.

Congress enacted that law -- one of the two crown jewels ofthe civil-rights movement -- because blacks were being deniedaccess to the vote through unfair state-imposed tests in thestill-segregated South. Passed a century after the Civil Warended, the law represented a sincere attempt by Congress to makethe 15th Amendment’s right to vote actually meaningful.