ATLANTA – Francis Taylor is old enough to remember the days when her mother was turned away from the ballot box in the segregated South and told that she could not vote because she was black.

“You couldn’t imagine the pain on her face,” said Ms. Taylor, 71, who grew up in Ruleville, Miss., but has lived in Queens since 1962. “My mama was a good woman who was simply devastated that in this country, she could not cast a vote for someone who would determine her future.”

Ms. Taylor, who put away her marching shoes some 20 years ago, dusted them off last weekend and joined thousands of others in Atlanta who called on Congress to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a piece of legislation that is set to expire in 2007.

“I’m getting too old to be marching like this,” said Ms. Taylor. “But I have lived too long in this country and have seen too many things as a black woman to sit back and allow our vote to be disenfranchised.”

Let’s be realistic. The Voting Rights Act will almost certainly be reauthorized. Almost everyone agrees with that sentiment. At issue here are sections of the act that some Republican leaders want to expunge.

In short, the legislation prohibits tactics that would weaken voter participation among blacks by preventing counties from implementing practices that would place an impediment before blacks looking to vote for their candidate of choice. Section 5 of the Act, for example, requires certain areas of the country – mainly the South – to obtain permission from the attorney general or the U.S. District Court for any changes regarding voting. As the legislation currently reads, these areas must be given approval before any new electoral practices can be administered.

The issue is so important that Rep. Charles Rangel along with Charlie King and Mark Green – two candidates in next year’s race for attorney general – flew here to rally alongside the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who organized the march.

Mr. Green and others point to the presidential election in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio four years later to illustrate the need for the legislation. Scores of blacks claimed that they were turned away from the ballot boxes and that their votes were not counted.

All the fuss about reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act may seem unimportant to those who have never experienced the humiliation of being turned away from the voting booth or are not aware that at one time, blacks were denied the right to vote because they had not paid their poll tax, passed a literacy exam, or owned property.

Some of the same legislators fighting to do away with the Voting Rights Act also voted against the symbolic gesture made by the U.S. Senate earlier this year when the legislative body offered an apology to blacks for its decision not to pass federal legislation outlawing lynchings.

Between 1882 and 1968, 4,743 people were killed by mob violence. Of those, nearly three-fourths, 3,446, were blacks.

More than 200 anti-lynching bills have been introduced in Congress, and three passed the House of Representatives.

But time after time, the Senate refused to act. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1942 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law.

The Voting Rights legislation, signed into law by President Johnson, came about at the right time. Just months before, a group of Alabama activists were brutally beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge while marching from Selma to Montgomery for the right to vote.

“We need the Voting Rights just as much now as we did 40 years ago,” said Mr. King, a Democrat, said. “Until we are sure that racism and discrimination are not factors, I see no harm in keeping the Voting Rights Act in place.”

The decision to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would send a powerful message that America, despite her sullied history, has come a long way.

“It would be great when no one has to worry about their vote being counted,” Ms. Taylor, who made the two-mile trek through Atlanta’s downtown in 90-degree weather to rally with thousands of others, said. “I hope I live to see that day. But sadly, it has not come yet.”