People hold posters in the 41st annual "Original" MLK Jr. Parade in Houston, the United States, on Jan. 21, 2019. Various activities are held on the third Monday of January each year throughout the United States to honor Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at the age of 39. (Xinhua/Yi-Chin Lee)

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Washington DC, Houston, Atlanta and other US cities to protest against laws in several Republican-led states that critics say will make it harder for minorities to vote.

The date selected for the rallies was not picked at random: It was on August 28, 1963 that a quarter-million people descended on Washington DC for a massive civil rights rally highlighted by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I have a dream" speech.

Addressing a much smaller crowd on Saturday, his son Martin Luther King III spoke of the need to safeguard American democracy and to guarantee voting rights for everyone.

"You are the dream, and this is our moment to make it true," he said in a statement.

Since January, at least 18 states have adopted a total of 30 restrictive election laws, with dozens of others under consideration, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit public policy institute. 

Those laws range from a requirement to have a fixed address in order to register to vote to a ban on the drive-through voting that was popular in some states in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Carrying signs that read "Voting rights for all" and "Your vote matters," the protesters marched in Washington DC's humid heat from the White House to the Capitol. About 20,000 people were in attendance, according to organizers.

"I just feel like we just kind of went backward," said Rikkea Harris, 25, an African-American university student.

Her father, Rickey Harris, 65, said that protesting was key to "trying to knock down all these voting suppression laws that they're putting in across the country."

In 1965 the US Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act, meant to ban discriminatory election measures.

But some states, mainly in the south, have passed often technical changes that make it harder for African-Americans - who tend to be Democrat voters - to cast a ballot. 

That process accelerated sharply as US former president Donald Trump pushed false claims that massive fraud had cost him victory in the November 2020 presidential election.

The organizers of Saturday's protests denounced the legislation as "racist, anti-democratic voter suppression laws," and demanded that the US Congress pass legislation to block such voting restrictions.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has passed two draft laws to limit the restrictions, but they are unlikely to pass the closely divided Senate. 

AFP