Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was created to enable the black population to vote. This right had been denied to blacks in some regions of the South since the end of the Reconstruction Era (1865–77; the period after the American Civil War [1861–65] when the southern states were reorganized and brought back into the Union ). The Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Constitution had given black men and black women the right to vote, but violence and intimidation, economic punishments, and unfair voting requirement tests had effectively prevented it. Prior civil rights acts had provided for African American voting rights, but their enforcement often depended on the cooperation of white Southerners who had no intention of complying with them.

Background

African Americans in Selma, Alabama , had long been obstructed from registering to vote by the segregationist (people who wanted to separate blacks and whites) local government. In late 1964, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization founded by Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), planned an all-out campaign in Selma aimed at winning new federal voting rights legislation. On March 7, 1965—a day that was later named “Bloody Sunday”—peaceful demonstrators began a march from Selma to Montgomery . They were almost immediately confronted by a brutal police attack. Mass arrests followed. The nation watched the violence on the television news. “Bloody Sunday” rallied public and congressional support for the Voting Rights Act that was being promoted by President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973). Congressional passage of the bill was marked by intense controversy, but, in its final form, the measure was overwhelmingly approved.

The Act

The 1965 Voting Rights Act applied to states and counties in which a test or other device was used to determine voter eligibility, and where voter turnout for the 1964 presidential election had been less than 50 percent of potentially eligible voters. In those areas, the Act prohibited the use of literacy (ability to read and write) and other racially discriminatory tests. The Act authorized federal examiners to replace local registrars (officials in charge of voting) and to observe voting procedures. It required a voting district or state to get advance federal approval for changes in election laws and voting procedures. The Act also expanded the voting rights of non-English-speaking citizens.

The act's effectiveness

In the immediate aftermath of the act's passage, impressive gains were made by federal authorities; in the first six months, they registered more than 100,000 southern blacks, while local officials, aware of the threat of federal action, added another 200,000. In 1965, some 2 million African Americans were registered to vote in the South; by mid-1970, that figure had jumped to 3.3 million.

Later gains under the act were weaker than the early ones. During the presidential administrations of Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994; served 1969–74) and Gerald Ford (1913–2006; served 1974–77), commitment to the act decreased. Many southern officials resisted the Voting Rights Act, challenging its constitutionality in court and continuing to withhold the ballot from African American voters. They also found ways to weaken the black community's voting power. Using a variety of techniques, including redrawing voting districts to break up black majorities and imposing new restrictions and property qualifications on political candidates, southern politicians made it difficult for black candidates to run for and win office.

The Voting Rights Act has been extended three times since its initial passage. Originally, its targets included Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia , parts of North Carolina , and Alaska . In 1970, the ban on literacy tests was expanded nationwide. The act was again extended in 1975, with less southern resistance than in the past. In 1982, the administration of President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; served 1981–89) fought vigorously against another extension, but even so, it was extended and even amended to address the wide range of strategies designed to get around it.

By 2005, a total of about 9,000 African Americans held elected office in the United States, compared to just 500 in 1965. Although the gains are impressive, African Americans were still underrepresented as elected officials relative to their proportions in the population.