“STAY OUT OF POLITICS,” warned Mitch McConnell, the senate’s top Republican, representing Kentucky. It was a message to the American business community in response to the condemnation by some prominent business leaders of a new law in Georgia that suppresses black votes. Though he later softened his rebuke, other elected officials and conservative voices have echoed the sentiment. But it is misguided.
The century-long effort to deny that right to black people after the Civil War remains one of the most shameful periods of American history. The powerful demands of the civil-rights movement, which resulted in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, began to unlock the stranglehold of Jim Crow laws in the South, which kept black people from casting a ballot.
Beyond voting, companies have also spoken out in recent years on an array of critical issues. After a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida in 2018, some major companies broke ties with the National Rifle Association and retailers placed additional restrictions on gun and ammunition sales. When a landmark LGBTQ rights case,, was before the Supreme Court in 2015, nearly 400 companies signed an amicus brief urging the court to guarantee same-sex couples the right to marry.