Banarr Lafayettewasn¡¯t just fighting for the future. He was fighting for the past. Lafayettewas one of the thousands of men and women who rallied together to help pressurethe government to pass the 1965 voting rights act. I¡¯m Tommy Andres. Welcome toCNN Radio News Day.

Nearly 50 yearsafter the passage of this ground-breaking civil rights legislation, we hear thestories of two of the men whose names will forever be tied to in the historybooks. And what it means - to have a change.

We¡¯ve seen theMartin King, one of the most brilliant men, and one of the greatest men of thiscountry, but this society hasn¡¯t change enough to truly accept what he foughtfor. Only the victims have a right to say that things have changed enough toget rid of it.

President Johnsonsends to Congress a bill to reinforce the right to vote. But Attorney GeneralNicholas cuts in back. The president signs in an accompanying letter to thelegislators, urging swift passage for the bill that will outlaw thediscriminatory practices. Then the Attorney General briefed the press on thesecond features of the bill. It will give his office the power to appointFederal registrars in six southern states, where literacy and other boarderqualification tests are required.

Times have changed.You can hear in this sort of news clips about the signing of the 1965 votingrights act. And today the Supreme Court ruled that the change has been bigenough to move away from that law. The voting rights act that passed nearly 50years ago required nine states and several counties, whether with a history ofracism, to get any changes to their voting laws approved by the US government,in short, that¡¯ll oversight elections. Now the Supreme Court didn¡¯t strike downthe heart of the law, and on paper, that¡¯ll oversight remains, that¡¯s calledSection 5. But the court ruled a different section, Section 4, isunconstitutional. That¡¯s the section that names the states¡¯ and counties¡¯cupboard by the law. But CNN¡¯s legal analyst Jeffery Tuben says, the law ispretty much powerless now.

What that means inpractice, is that the other part of the law - Section 5, which says thosestates have to be in supervision that is dormant. That doesn¡¯t matter anymoreuntil and unless Congress goes back and comes up with a modern formula.

So as Tuben says,it¡¯s now up to Congress to figure out whether or not the formula should berewritten. And today Wolf Blitzer joined the course of CNN analyst who saidthat probably won¡¯t happen.

Politically, Ithink, it¡¯s unlikely that given the current makeup of the House ofRepresentatives, for example, it¡¯s very unlikely they will go ahead andreinstate some of these provisions from the 1965 voting rights act that werestruck down.

The end of LCPwasn¡¯t to have with the ruling, as you might expect. Here is what SharalonIphone, a lawyer for the group said after the announcement:

This is a criticalissue of democracy; this speaks to the very core of American values. Thisdecision by the court today is a game-changer, and leaves virtually unprotectedminority voters and communities all over this country.

Now since it¡¯s beenkicked back to Congress the issue will be largely a political one now, one thatwill likely come to ahead right around mid-term elections in November. But forthe men and women fought for the voting rights at in the first place, it¡¯s muchmore than politics. In a recent article titled Veterans Have Forgotten VotingWill Come at a Cost, CNN.com writer John Blake looks at the fact to get tovote. It features people like Banarr Lafayette who, at 22 years old, was beatenjust for registering black voters in the South. Lafayette recounts the momenthe decided change was necessary.