Today, few people think twice about the fact that a black woman is secretary of state, or that African-Americans hold 43 seats in Congress and serve as mayors in several major cities, including in the South.

These are the legacies of the Voting Rights Act, which President Lyndon Johnson signed into law this month 40 years ago. It has been called the single most important civil rights legislation ever passed, and with good reason.

To members of the rising generation, the days before the act are difficult to imagine. They fall from the pages of history books like something from the Civil War era, when uneducated passions held the upper hand on reason. But many adults today have clear memories of those days, which in some ways seem closer than 40 years ago.

In many states back then, black people who wanted to register to vote faced insurmountable challenges. They had to pay poll taxes, or they were required to answer impossible test questions. The biggest of their challenges, however, was the violence they often encountered just for trying. Support for passage of the act hit the tipping point after civil rights marchers were brutally beaten by police in Selma, Ala. In the end, the bigots were their own worst enemies. They were fighting for a flawed cause, and their tactics shocked a passive nation into action.

Today, a controversy is brewing over whether Congress should renew certain parts of the act that will expire in 2007. Among other things, these require the federal government to approve changes in voting rules in nine states and seven jurisdictions, and they require voting information to be available in foreign languages.

The chief consideration in that debate has to be whether voting, and the people in charge, are now so pure as to have their motives be completely beyond question. Clearly, that is not the case. Today, partisan politics is perhaps a bigger consideration than race. But enough people have raised concerns in recent elections over whether certain precincts have adequate numbers of voting machines and other materials that it seems wise to extend the provisions awhile longer.

Perhaps more than anything else, the Voting Rights Act helped to subtly change attitudes in American society. Racism is no longer socially acceptable.

Many people may still harbor those feelings. The nation hasn't overcome its race problems entirely. But the overwhelming majority now seems to understand that it is wrong to deny people basic rights because of their color. That is true progress, indeed.