MERIDIAN, Miss. (AP) — With America roiling over questions of racial justice and a divisive election just days away, the AP Road Trip team made its way to Mississippi, and the scene of an infamous 1964 triple murder of civil rights workers fighting for Black voting rights.
Almost no Black people could vote in Mississippi until well into the 1960s, with a white power structure that feared their empowerment. That changed with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but it hasn’t ended.
There are no poll taxes anymore, no tests on the state constitution. But voters face obstacles such as state-mandated ID laws that mostly affect poor and minority communities and the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of former prisoners.
