Today’s news reports announce that the Supreme Court has struck down section four of the Voting Rights Act on the grounds that its coverage formula, which determines what areas of the country must receive prior approval for any changes in voting laws (most recently revisited by Congress in 1975) is out of date. Of course that’s not the whole story. The court has not ruled narrowly. This decision is an outrageous piece of judicial activism masquerading as something else.

Last evening we watched “Brother Outsider,” the award winning documentary about the life and career of Bayard Rustin. The ten-year-old film is circulating again in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 march on Washington, which Rustin organized. The screening was presented by the Missouri History Museum and was attended by a large and diverse crowd. It was good to see such a high level of interest for this classic memoir of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Most present-day evocations of the famous march focus on Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which, though it climaxed the program, was hardly the first event of note or the only speech before the Lincoln memorial that day fifty years ago. One candid moment in “Brother Outsider,” for instance, shows Rustin walking directly behind Bob Dylan and Joan Baez singing Dylan’s “When the Ship comes In.” Rustin is casually smoking a cigarette and seeming not to listen. And what has largely been forgotten about that day is the list of demands that Rustin delivered in a speech that preceded Dr. King’s, along with the fact that the march’s full title was “March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom.” It was the brain child of A. Philip Randolph, but it could never have happened without Rustin. And the presence of both men at the center of it underscores something else we have forgotten as a people: that the civil rights movement was as much about economic justice and equality of access to the goods of our society as it was about ending Jim Crow laws.

And it’s worth noting that even during the program on the mall dissent raged between members of SNCC, particularly John Lewis, and more moderate members of the civil rights coalition over the language of Lewis’s speech. A pretty good short history of the march is here, and here’s the text of the speech that Lewis delivered that day; Lewis’s unedited speech is quoted in in material I have cited previously. Fifty years later, we live in the midst of the resegregation of America. Looking back on the 1963 march, one witness, Evelyn Cunningham, exclaimed:

I must’ve cried for an hour and a half at one point during the march. Part of it was sheer happiness, part of it was pride, and part of it was my family. I’m steeped in my respect for my people. After the march, I thought, ‘Oh my God, we’re almost there’ — God, was I wrong.

If you think resegregation is too strong a word, perhaps you should reflect on the high rate of incarceration among persons of color in this country along with the systematic attack on voting rights being orchestrated through state legislatures by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Resegregation is now widely documented, both in schools and in our civic life. The process is being exacerbated by the growth of income inequality, and Texas is moving a voter suppression measure into place as I write.

The President and many members of Congress have spoken out against the high court’s decision, but I don’t think the present congress will be able to act in support of voting rights. So what I am left with today is a host of memories and a good deal of anger. It was good to relive parts of the civil rights movement last evening in company with many good folk. This morning I have listened to the great Odetta Holmes’s recording of her matchless rendition of “Oh Freedom,” a spiritual that Bayard Rustin also sang beautifully. It would be fine to be able to think that my country has embraced civil rights—pretty to think so, to draw on another memory. No, it would be beautiful. It’s just not true.