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Here in southwest Mississippi, those questions are as real and solid as the longleaf pines.

A run-down brick house on this street was bombed by segregationists in the summer of 1964; a few blocks away is a boarded-up supermarket that was bombed the same summer. Down the road is the town where a Mississippi state representative shot a black voting-rights activist. A black man who was witness to that shooting was killed soon after, and the men sitting in the back of the local drugstore still debate what the witness, whom they knew, was planning to say.

The McComb project, as it was called by civil rights workers in 1961, was one of the early battles in a long and bloody war for voting rights in the South, a crucible for future leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who drilled black residents to pass the constitutional literacy tests and in return for their civic engagement were shot at, jailed and beaten.

Most people here, whites and blacks, agree that that was a very bad time. They also, generally, agree that things are much better now.

But on the more specific question on the necessity of Section 5, which requires nine states, most of them Southern, to submit voting changes for federal approval, opinions begin to separate. And by and large, there is a relatively easy test here to tell what a person is likely to think, and it comes down to the person's skin color.

"I have to agree that it was very bad," said Hollis Watkins, 72, a leader of the McComb project who sang spirituals to his fellow civil rights workers as they languished in jail in 1961.

"But based on where we are now, and understanding their way of camouflaging things, instead of it being very bad, it's bad," added Mr. Watkins, who is still active in civil rights work in Mississippi.

The voting battles in Mississippi did not end in 1965. The state dragged its feet for four years before the first Justice Department review, and since then the federal government has objected to voting changes in Mississippi 173 times, 116 of them coming since the act was renewed in 1982.

With a black population of 37 percent, by far the largest in the country, Mississippi did not have a black representative in Congress until 1986. As recently as 1990, only 22 out of the 204 members of the Mississippi State Legislature were black. While no black statewide official has been elected, there are now a black congressman and 49 black state lawmakers.

Many of these changes came about through application of Section 5; the Mississippi attorney general, Jim Hood, filed a friend of the court brief in the case now before the Supreme Court, arguing that the section continues to play a "vital role" in the state's progress.

Mr. Hood's filing did not go over well with everyone here. A column in The Enterprise-Journal, the daily newspaper here, was titled "Jim Hood doesn't trust us."

Wayne Dowdy, who as a Democratic congressman in 1982 voted to extend Section 5 for 25 years and has no doubt that it was necessary then, is also skeptical. "I have mixed feelings about the Voting Rights Act," he said.

Mr. Dowdy is now the lawyer for Pike County, where McComb sits. When the 2010 census numbers were released, it was revealed that for the first time, the county had a black majority. Some black residents were outraged when the county's new redistricting map, just as before 2010, left three of the five county supervisor districts as majority white. The map was submitted to the Justice Department as required, and was approved.

Mr. Dowdy has his concerns about suppression of minority votes, but thinks the nature of the suppression has changed from the time of Section 5.

"Rather than the literary tests and poll taxes, the problems we have now are different," Mr. Dowdy said. "There are long lines in certain neighborhoods, there are voter ID requirements. And those kinds of problems are not restricted to the Southern states."

Sitting in the combination beauty salon and laundromat he owns in the historically black Summit Street District, Tazwell Bowsky, one of Pike County's two black supervisors, agrees that times have changed. But better, he insists, is not perfect.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think McComb would be all right," he said, contemplating the prospect of Section 5's demise. But the law is still essential, he said, saying, "There are other places around here," before deciding to remain discreet about where those places may be.

"I'll tell you if he won't," said Johnny McCray, 37, overhearing the conversation from his haircutting station. "Amite County and Tylertown."

Amite County, which is spoken of in similar chilled tones by black residents in McComb, sits next door.

Redistricting and poll watchers have such a history in Amite County that the older white men sitting around at the drugstore in the county seat, Liberty, can swap their favorite election stories, many of which tend to have punch lines showing federal involvement as misguided and ineffectual.

The Justice Department is not amused. As recently as 2011, it struck down the county's redistricting map, charging that county leaders had decreased the number of black voters in one district in favor of another, while fully knowing that black turnout in the latter district had historically been very low.

The district belongs to Max Lawson, a 60-year-old rancher. Sitting in his sun-filled kitchen, Mr. Lawson, who voted against the proposed map along with the one black county supervisor, began to detail his objections to federal intervention, which mostly involved the fact that roads he arranged to have paved were now in another district. On the question of race and the need for voting controls, he seemed puzzled.

"That was generations ago," said Mr. Lawson, adding that many of his supporters are black. "It wasn't us."

Percy Pittman, who as a teenager spent nights keeping an armed vigil at his church to guard against firebombers, differed in his recollection of just how far away the bad times were. But he expressed similar sentiments.

"I don't want stay angry because of something that happened a long time ago," said Mr. Pittman, for nearly two decades the Pike County coroner and for now the sole black countywide elected official. "I don't even allow my children to watch 'Roots.' "

Now 65, Mr. Pittman, believes that people in McComb, the largest city in Pike County, think in terms of personality rather than skin color.  That is, he clarified, most of them do.

Asked what he thought about people's claims that racially motivated politics were completely a thing of the past in the South, Mr. Pittman hesitated for a moment.

"I think they're full of it," he said.