COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — Wednesday will mark the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark piece of legislation that was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The law prohibited discrimination based on race, color or language status and secured protections for blind, disabled or illiterate voters in registration and voting across the nation.

The bill, most recently reauthorized in 2006 under the Bush administration, made progress towards voter equality.

“The Voting Rights Act that broke the segregationist lock on the ballot box rose from the courage shown on a Selma bridge one Sunday afternoon in March of 1965. On that day, African Americans, including a member of the United States Congress, John Lewis, marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a protest intended to highlight the unfair practices that kept them off the voter rolls.“

— President George W. Bush, July 2006

LINK: Sen. Warnock Reintroduces the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

The VRA of 1965 has been amended and reauthorized multiple times since its original passage. It has come under criticism more recently as some democrats say voter suppression still exists now.

Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, is part of more than 200 groups now calling for passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D- Ill.) joined Wiley and others in Washington, D.C., where the bill was introduced in the Senate. He was a new member of Congress when he was invited to Selma, Alabama, by Congressman Lewis.

“It was a moment of my public life I’ll never forget,” Durbin said. “I walked down that Edmund Pettus Bridge right next to John Lewis and he told me the story of that day, that day when he was in Selma.”

That day Lewis shared with Durbin, was Sunday, March 7, 1965, Bloody Sunday.

A then 25-year-old Lewis led more than 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. They were brutally attacked. The violence captured the nation’s attention and energized the civil rights movement.

AP POLITICS: Democrats try again to revive the Voting Rights Act but face long odds

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D- Ga.) of Georgia says the John Lewis bill is needed today.

““We all have value, and if we all have value, we all should have a voice.“

— Sen. Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.)

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) says the new iteration of the bill is a “power grab” by Democrats.

“Over the past several election cycles, both Republicans and Democrats have had serious concerns about election integrity,” Tuberville said. “If we don’t have safe, fair elections, we don’t have a country. Unfortunately, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act has nothing to do with ‘voting rights’ – it is a federal takeover of elections.
While I support the heroic actions of leaders like John Lewis who fought to secure voting rights for millions of Americans, this bill has nothing to do with that – it’s a desperate power grab for Radical Democrats.”

— Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)

RELATED: Nearly 500,000 voters to be purged from Georgia voter list