Bush urges Senate to renew civil rights law
US President George Bush today urged the Senate to renew a landmark civil rights law passed in the 1960s to stop racist voting practices in the South.
“President Johnson called the right to vote the lifeblood of our democracy. That was true then and it remains true today,” Bush said in the first address of his presidency to the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s annual convention.
Acknowledging his administration’s bumpy relations with black voters, Bush said he wants to change the Republican Party’s relationship with African-Americans.
“I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historical ties with the African-American community. For too long, my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party.“
Bush, joined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his chief political adviser Karl Rove, spoke as the Senate debated a bill to approve a 25-year extension of expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
For five years in a row, Bush has declined invitations to address the NAACP convention.
