Download Marjorie Moreno Voting Rights Act - sla

(Fig.1: President Johnson with Dr. Martin Luther King celebrating the signing of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965)
By: Marjorie Moreno
Red Stream
Voting Rights Act
By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had
been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall
and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of votingrights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with
numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on
March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund
Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery,
persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators'
resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call
for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that
would become the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is
considered to be the most effective civil rights statute enacted by Congress.
Pursuant to the Act, the Voting Section undertakes investigations and litigation
throughout the United States and its territories, conducts administrative review of
changes in voting practices and procedures in certain jurisdictions, and monitors
elections in various parts of the country. Next I will talk about the limits of
southern law, Increase votes participation, and increase percent of African
Americas in office.
Each person has different views and opinions about the Voting Rights act,
some opinions where that when the voting rights act started the bias voting
disappeared, some others opinions were that even though the voting rights act
started, racist people ask African Americans and others color person to fill on
papers information, even though they knew that the African Americans didn’t
know how to, because lack of knowledge how to read and write.
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965 by President Lyndon
Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many
southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to
voting. The impact of this act was dramatic. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the
traditional 13 Southern states, had less than 50% of African Americans
registered to vote. By 1968, even hard-line Mississippi had 59% of African
Americans registered. In the longer term, far more African Americans were
elected into public office (about 15% of the Africans Americans who apply).
Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific
protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the
Constitution nor federal laws governed. At that time, although a few northern
states permitted a small number of free black men to register and vote, slavery
and restrictive state laws and practices led the franchise to be exercised almost
exclusively by white males.
In1870 the 15th Amendment was ratified, which provided specifically that
the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or
previous condition of servitude. This superseded state laws that had directly
prohibited black voting. Congress then enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870,
which contained criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote, and the
Force Act of 1871, which provided for federal election oversight.
Fig. 2:
(1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with
James Farmer, Director of the Congress of Racial Equality. Photo by National
Archive/Newsmakers)
Fig.3:
(1967: Thurgood-Marshall The first African-American justice of the United States
Supreme Court. Photo by MPI/Getty Images)
Bibliography:
o Cornell University Law school. Retrieved May 22, 2008, from Voting
Rights Act Web site:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/usc_sec_42_00001971----000-.html
o bill, Mauldin (2002). Spartacus Educational. Retrieved May 22, 2008, from
Voting Rights Act Web site:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAvoting65.htm
o TV land. Retrieved May 22, 2008, from Photo Gallery Web site:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tvland.com/photogalle
ry/photos/Voting-Rights-Act-of1965.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.tvland.com/photogallery/blackhistory/index.
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