Letters to the Editor: Why the Republican Party deserves no credit for the 1965 Voting Rights Act

To the editor: I object to the incomplete picture painted by the letter writer who identified himself as the son of Auschwitz survivors and said the Democrats were really the party of racism and antisemitism. (“On listening to Holocaust survivors as democracy retreats,” letters, Jan. 29)

The letter writer cites Republican support for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The truth is that 47 Democratic Senators voted for the law, as did 30 Republicans. In the House, 221 Democrats voted for it as did 112 Republicans. The Democratic and Republican legislators who voted against the act represented Southern states.

These senators identified as “racial conservatives, “and a huge number of their white, Democratic constituents fled to the Republican Party afterward.

As far as the antisemitic trope uttered by one Democratic member of Congress who apologized for her comment, what about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who recently said that requiring proof of vaccination for employees was “just like the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a gold star”?

It is important to print different viewpoints, but it’s more important to give the entire picture.

Suzanne Solig, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Conservatives like this letter writer often use the 1965 Voting Rights Act as proof of Democratic Party racism.

They do not mention that the bill was pushed by a Democratic president and overwhelmingly sponsored by Democrats in the Senate and House. In addition, many of the Southern Democrats who voted against the act became Republicans.

The letter writer makes another spurious claim by stating that David Duke, the former KKK leader, praised Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for her antisemitic remarks without mentioning that Duke is a Republican.

If the letter writer is truly concerned about antisemtism and racism in politics, he should pay attention to current conservative Republican policies and not to events that happened five decades ago.

Carl Godlewski, Venice