Peter Pitegoff is professor emeritus and former dean at the University of Maine School of Law.

In recent weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Louisiana v. Callais  has essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act. First enacted by Congress in 1965, the Voting Rights Act is seen by many as the most effective piece of civil rights legislation in our history.

Over 50 years ago, in the wake of the Voting Rights Act, I was a community organizer in rural North Carolina. We worked with Black residents in severely poor and segregated counties and, together, helped build organization and agency for people who had long been denied a say in government affairs.

Concrete successes were modest at best. These individuals — some unemployed, most underemployed — led hardscrabble lives. But, for the most part, they found enough to eat, often thanks to a close community of neighbors, with farms and gardens, and a culture of generosity. And they persisted, against all odds, in fighting for their civil rights. Their determination inspired me then and has fueled my commitment to justice ever since.

So, I am especially disheartened by the recent Supreme Court rulings on voting rights. The Callais case this year nullified a section of the Voting Rights Act aimed at assuring voters of color a modicum of fair representation in Congress. It compounded the devastating effect of the 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

This earlier Supreme Court case struck down the preclearance formula in the Voting Rights Act, which had required certain states and localities with a history of discriminatory voter restrictions to obtain federal approval before amending their voting policies. Now, bolstered by these court decisions, several states are moving quickly to enact new voting districts that essentially deny Black and Hispanic communities the power to elect candidates of their own choosing.

Discouraging, yes, but also a hint of hope. I had the good fortune to travel this year to Alabama, rekindling memories of my time in the rural South. The trek was organized by the SEED School of Maryland, a public charter school for students from low-income households.

We tracked sites of civil rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s, from Birmingham to Montgomery and to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Among many stops, we visited the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where a 1963 terrorist bombing by the Ku Klux Klan tragically killed four young girls and injured a dozen people.

We sat in Selma’s Brown Chapel AME Church, which served as a safe haven for activists and the starting point for the 1965 Selma voting rights marches. We listened in awe to firsthand accounts of iconic marches, demonstrations and cruel violence. One woman recalled, then in her teens, imploring her mother to let her march with John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. despite the risk of violence.

My experience was especially poignant traveling with Baltimore-area teenagers, who internalized this history and expressed their own determination to fight for justice. And it allowed me a bit of optimism, that younger generations will persist and step up as leaders.

Clearly, we are in troubled times today — with deep divisions, with hate and violence, with an assault on the rule of law, with the dismantling of critical institutions, with economic stress and inequality, with a failure of leadership and of civics education.

I trust, nonetheless, that our democracy is elastic and capable of recovering core values and just purpose. Not necessarily right away, but over time and generations. Not automatically, but with people speaking, demonstrating, fighting for what’s right.

Many of us, in Maine and elsewhere, understandably feel helpless and discouraged. But these times demand that we push back, in ways large and small, to promote justice. It is, and always has been, a continuing challenge.