South Carolina may be the putative heart of the Tea Party [see below] but it has a stand-up crowd, too.  On the annual celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr, crowds turned out to denounce the new laws in the state — and elsewhere– requiring photo-id to cast a ballot.

For most of 13 years in South Carolina, the attention at the NAACP’s annual rally has been on the Confederate flag that still waves outside the State House. But yesterday, the civil rights group shifted the focus to laws requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast ballots, which the group and many other critics say is especially discriminatory toward African-Americans and the poor.

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“This has been quite a faith-testing year. We have seen the greatest attack on voting rights since segregation,’’ said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The shift in tactics was also noted by the keynote speaker at the Columbia rally, US Attorney General Eric Holder.

Last month, Holder said the Justice Department was committed to fighting any laws that keep people from the ballot box. He told the crowd he was keenly aware he could not have become the nation’s first African-American attorney general without the blood shed by King and other civil rights pioneers.

Jeffrey Collins: Boston Globe

...more at SF Chronicle....

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