It took 100 years after the end of slavery for Black Americans to truly gain the right to vote with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And now, six decades later, the law that took a century of protests, strategizing, boycotts and deaths to get passed has been put on life support by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Considered the crown jewel of the Civil Rights movement, the Voting Rights Act removed such barriers to voting as poll taxes, grandfather clauses, violence and literacy tests. All were used to keep Black people from voting. Those schemes resulted in a great drop in numbers of Black voters. In Louisiana, they helped reduce Black voter registration from 130,000 in 1888 to 5,400 by 1900.  At issue in Louisiana v. Callais was Section 2 of the law, which was in part responsible for the increase in the number of Black Congress members across the South. It did so by allowing districts with large Black populations, which in turn increased Black voter participation.…