This is a guest opinion column

This weekend, thousands will gather in Selma to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. For a couple days, the earth will seem to stop spinning for those assembled as they are immersed in history – walking in the same steps as the marchers that day, reflecting on the ruthlessness employed to prevent Black citizens from registering to vote and strategizing over the ongoing efforts to keep and construct new barriers to voting for Black and Brown communities.

This year though, amid the solemn events observing the anniversary and important discussions on how to overcome the ongoing challenges, there may be a little more optimism in the air than usual. This is because over the last year there have been two major developments that have significantly expanded the political power of Black citizens, especially in the South.

It was 60 years ago this November that Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate that year, flipped the Democratic South. His victories in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina set the trajectory for politics in those states for the next six decades.

In the months leading up to that election, President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act and purportedly confessed to a staffer that while “it is an important gain…we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”

He wasn’t the only one aware of the potential political impact of that legislation and the growing movement for equality. Around the same time, at a meeting of Republican Party leadership, Goldwater made the case for a GOP Southern Strategy, what he called, “going hunting where the ducks are.” White voters in the Deep South were increasingly unsettled over the Civil Rights Movement threatening their hold on political power. In the years that followed, Republicans, stoking racial resentment and fear of what could be coming, drove a wedge between white Southern voters and the Democratic Party.

Though Goldwater lost that election to Johnson by a margin greater than any presidential candidate in history, his victory in the Deep South established the party realignment that has endured for sixty years and a landscape where a major proportion of the nation’s Black population resides in states in which white conservative politicians control state legislatures and governor’s mansions.

But the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) recent move of South Carolina and other more diverse states to the front of the party’s nominating process – at the urging of President Biden – marks an important shift.

While most of the media coverage has focused on the notion that this is payback for Biden’s victory in South Carolina’s 2020 Primary and an effort to excite Black voters ahead of the 2024 election, that narrative drastically downplays the significance of this move and its ability to change the course of national politics.

For many years, Democratic party leaders have known the calendar and the order of the states’ nominating process needed change. Despite the critical role Black voters play in the party’s electorate, they have had little say in the nominating process. Biden’s plea to make South Carolina the first state to host a primary, and the DNC’s decision to implement it, embraces the critical role voters of color have in any Democratic national victory, could significantly grow the party’s electorate and increases their political muscle.

The impact of this move goes far beyond the primary nominating process. Black voters will not only have the chance to vote earlier in the process, they will also have a greater opportunity to help steer the public conversation and shape the party’s policy agenda. Think about the countless interactions between mostly white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and Republican candidates that we have seen over the past months. In the coming years, voters of color will join this key nominating role of questioning and testing the candidates.

While Black voters have been essential to the Democratic Party’s base, their turnout has remained disproportionately lower than white voters for decades. Much of this can be attributed to voter ID laws and restricted voting access efforts targeting Black and Brown communities. But, it is also the result of decades of being disenfranchised by the political system because the Republican Southern strategy didn’t just affect national elections. Many Black Americans long ago grew accustomed to living under white political leaders who rarely responded to their communities’ concerns or needs and at times actively worked to undermine them.

This reordering of the nominating contest offers an opportunity for these disaffected voters to reengage with the political process just as margin of victories have been growing closer in many elections.

At the same time, through unexpected victories in Alabama and Louisiana, advocates have secured new congressional maps which provide Black voters in those states an enormous opportunity for better representation at the federal level. For years, Black Alabamians were scattered throughout the state’s congressional districts or packed into one of the seven districts. This meant that despite making up over a quarter of the state’s population, they only had one district where they had the political power to elect a candidate of their choice. Similarly in Louisiana, courts forced state legislators there to also create a second majority-Black district.

These gains are intensified by growing cracks in the GOP’s solid South. Voters in Georgia elected a Black man and a Jewish man to the U.S. Senate and turned the state blue in the 2020 presidential election. And, in Mississippi, the sitting Republican Gov. Tate Reeves recently narrowly beat his Democratic opponent in what the Associated Press described as the most competitive governor’s race in a generation.

There is no doubt that much work and many challenges lie ahead for advocates of voting rights and fair representation – especially when Congress has been unable to reauthorize and update the Voting Rights Act for years now. But hopefully these recent steps forward bring new energy to this year’s commemorations and the ongoing struggle.

Marion Steinfels is a public policy advocate and political strategist based in Alabama. She is also a former adjunct professor at the University of Alabama, where she taught courses on presidential politics and the impact of political discourse on the nation’s policy priorities.