Activist’s fight against segregation evolved into political action to push for voting rights
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By GARY FIELDS
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Norman Hill was an activist in the early 1960s fighting against segregation when he made a switch to the labor movement, which at the time saw the push for Black voting rights as a way to boost membership in unions. He recalls how difficult it was to get Black people registered and then able to cast a ballot before the Voting Rights Act. Those who tried to register faced tests, he says, such as being asked “how many bubbles are in a bar of soap or interpret a section of the Constitution.” He did not anticipate, nearly 50 years after it was signed, that the Supreme Court would toss out one of the law’s key provisions.