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La. puts Voting Rights Act in crosshairs
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Supreme Court to mull race’s role in redistricting
BY ALYSE PFEIL Staff writer
PHOTOS By APRIL BUFFINGTON
The Doyle Tigers run back to the sidelines after halftime against North Corbin Junior High on Aug. 26 at Walker High School. The 40 Doyle seventh graders make up the school’s first football team in almost 40 years.
Football returns to small Louisiana town 40 years after high school team disbanded BY CLAIRE GRUNEWALD Staff writer
For the first time in 39 years, Livingston residents donned purple and gold and packed into the stands to watch their sons, friends and students play a football game. The fans cheered for a team of 40 seventh graders wearing brand-new jerseys and representing the Doyle Tigers at a jamboree game Aug. 26 against North Corbin at Walker High School. The young team, composed mostly of boys who had never played a down of organized football in their lives, didn’t score at the preseason game.
But the players, coaches and residents all say what they are doing out on the field is bigger than any scoreboard. “You could just feel an excitement,” Livingston Mayor JT Taylor said about the scrimmage. “The first first down, you would’ve thought we won the Super Bowl.” In 1986, the Doyle High School varsity football team played its last season, going 0-10. The school then disbanded the program after more than 20 years. Nearly four decades later, Doyle is bringing back its junior high football program,
ä See FOOTBALL, page 4A
Doyle’s Dallas Savant, center, tries to run the ball during the Aug. 26 jamboree.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that could fundamentally change the role that race plays in elections across the country — and Louisiana is at the center of it. Callais v. Louisiana is, on the surface, about whether Louisiana must have a congressional map with two majority-Black districts. But the nation’s high court could issue a ruling overturning decades of precedent that has governed how race can be used in redistricting. At issue is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, landmark civil rights legislation that for years has driven lawsuits and court orders requiring states like Louisiana to draw majority-minority voting districts. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a federal law passed by Congress to guarantee Black people access to the ballot and prevent voting discrimination. In its original form, the legislation outlawed race-based voting tests, helped eliminate poll taxes, allowed the federal government to oversee voting in states where discrimination was happening and required states with discriminatory voting practices to get federal approval before making changes to voting laws. The stated aim of the law was to enforce the 15th Amendment, which had been approved nearly 100 years earlier and says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in part says, “No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any state or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” “When it was passed, the main concern was to facilitate Black registration and turnout,”
ä See VOTING, page 4A
AFGHANISTAN
Earthquake destroys villages, kills 800 By The Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan — Desperate Afghans clawed through rubble in search of missing loved ones after a strong earthquake killed some 800 people and injured more than 2,500 in eastern Afghanistan, according to figures provided Monday by the Taliban government. The 6.0 magnitude quake late
Sunday hit towns in the province of Kunar, near the city of Jalalabad in neighboring Nangarhar province, causing extensive damage. One resident in Nurgal district, one of the worst-affected areas in Kunar, said nearly the entire village was destroyed. “Children are under the rubble. The elderly are under the rubble.
Young people are under the rubble,” said the villager, who did not give his name. “We need help here,” he pleaded. “We need people to come here and join us. Let us pull out the people who are buried. There is no one who can come and remove dead bodies from under the rubble.”
ä See EARTHQUAKE, page 4A
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