WASHINGTON -- Wednesday is the 60th anniversary of the day President Lyndon Johnson made his way to the U.S. Capitol and, with Martin Luther King Jr. standing behind him, signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

The act protected the right to vote and ensured the government would fight efforts to suppress it, especially those aimed at Black voters. For many Americans, it was the day U.S. democracy fully began.

That was then.

The law has been slowly eroding for more than a decade, starting with the 2013 Supreme Court decision ending the requirement that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting get federal approval before changing the way they hold elections. Within hours of the ruling, some states that had been under the preclearance provision began announcing

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