When the right-wing justices of the Supreme Court, scorning judicial precedent and legislative mandate, voted to gut the Voting Rights Act—the capstone legislation of the civil rights movement—the effect was predictable and predicted. Republicans in Tennessee rushed to eliminate the sole congressional district represented by an African American. Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina are scrambling to join them. The disgraceful decision kicked off what will be a concerted effort to reduce African American representation in the nation’s legislative bodies—federal, state, and local.

The gang of six on the Supreme Court served as willing collaborators in what is now a systematic right-wing offensive to roll back the progress wrought not only by the civil rights movement but also all of the civilizing movements of our time—the women’s movement, the LGBT movement, and more. This assault, spearheaded by an authoritarian president, is waged on many fronts. In the courts, the Department of Justice has turned from opening doors to slamming them shut to protect the privilege of white men. On the streets, masked thugs terrorize people of color, particularly communities of Hispanics, Haitians, Somalis, and other immigrants. The full force of the administration is mobilized to eradicate programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in government, corporations, and universities. Public museums, national parks, libraries, and monuments are censored to erase the oppression suffered and the contributions made by African Americans and other people of color.

We’ve suffered this form of reaction before. After the Civil War, after passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments outlawing slavery and guaranteeing equal protection under the law, the Congress launched the reconstruction of the Confederate states. With former slaves gaining the right to vote, multiracial coalitions helped write some of the most enlightened state Constitutions in our history, guaranteeing universal public education, democratic elections, and more.

The reaction was fierce and unrelenting. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized former slaves seeking to vote. Disinformation campaigns spread lies about Black leaders. Upon regaining control, plantation legislators passed “black codes,” effectively using debt bondage to shackle the newly freed slaves. The Supreme Court provided its imprimatur in Plessy v. Ferguson, which, to the lasting shame of the court, ratified segregation, Jim Crow, the American version of apartheid. It took almost another century before the civil rights movement brought that injustice to an end.

We celebrate that movement and its leaders—Dr. Martin Luther King and SCLC, John Lewis and SNCC, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, and more. Jesse Louis Jackson and the drive to register millions of African Americans to blunt the Reagan reaction. And we should never forget that the movement succeeded because ordinary people risked their lives, suffered arrest and beatings and murders, to force the change. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were great presidents, but it was people of conscience—ministers, rabbis and priests, whites and Blacks, farmers and seamstresses, the young and the old—joining together who challenged the horror, exposed the unconscionable, and roused the country to demand change.

This lesson informs our actions today. We will not allow this new reaction to succeed or to last for generations. We will mobilize now—as the citizens of Minneapolis showed—and challenge those who would try to roll back the progress that we have made.

At Rainbow PUSH, we will organize to meet this fierce reaction with a renewed movement for reconstruction. On June 10–13, we will convene a gathering—“Fulfilling the American Promise to Its People”—when we will lay out plans to launch a massive voter registration and mobilization drive, targeted on those states and localities that seek to erase minority representation. Their insult will not discourage us, it will arouse us. Incumbent Republicans will find that instead of gaining seats, they may be putting their own seats at risk.

Build a broad coalition across lines of race, religion, and region to educate and mobilize voters. We will convene faith leaders, grassroots organizers, youth activists, influencers, and public scholars, partnering with civil rights, labor, disability rights, and women’s and immigrant justice organizations to build a powerful movement for justice.

Combat disinformation at the local level by sponsoring community teach-ins, hosting public forums, and partnering with schools and universities to strengthen civic literacy. Counter the efforts to whitewash our history by challenging censorship, while educating today’s activists about the long struggle for enfranchisement—from Reconstruction to this generation’s civilizing movement.

Demand legislative action—at the federal, state, and local level—to strengthen voting rights. Push the Congress to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and drive state reforms to protect voting rights and repeal voter suppression measures. Call for expanding the Supreme Court to counter the increasingly partisan and arbitrary lawlessness of the entrenched right-wing majority. Coalesce to drive reforms to address economic inequality and entrenched poverty, the unfinished agenda of the civil rights movement.