Voting Rights Act of 1965

Examples of Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the following topics:

• Civil Rights and Voting Rights

  • The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were landmark pieces of legislation that addressed major forms of discrimination.
  • The bill would soon be followed by the equally momentous Voting Rights Act, which effectively ended the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South.
  • His proposal, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, prohibited states and local governments from passing laws that discriminated against voters on the basis of race.
  • The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act changed the lives of African Americans and transformed society in many ways.
  • Examine the passage and significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• The 26th Amendment

  • The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution barred the states or federal government from setting a voting age higher than eighteen.
  • The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
  • Eisenhower, in his 1954 State of the Union address, became the first president to publicly state his support for prohibiting age-based denials of suffrage for those 18 and older.
  • On June 22, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required the voting age to be 18 in all federal, state, and local elections.

• The Civil Rights Acts

  • The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed forms of discrimination against women and minorities.
  • The Civil Rights Act was followed by the Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Johnson in 1965.
  • The Voting Rights Act outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African-Americans.
  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination in voting.
  • Compare and contrast the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act

• Legislative Change

  • The goal of the 1957 Civil Rights Act was to ensure that all Americans could exercise their right to vote.
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1960 addressed some of the shortcomings of the 1957 act.
  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was introduced in Congress two days later while civil rights leaders, now under the protection of federal troops, led a march of 25,000 people from Selma to Montgomery.
  • Alabama police in 1965 attack voting rights marchers participating in the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches, which became known as "Bloody Sunday."
  • Analyze the gains and limitations of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

• The Spread of Segregation

  • It prevented any state from denying the right to vote to any male citizen on account of his race.
  • As no African-American in the South could have voted then, this denied nearly all of the freed men their right to vote.
  • Prominant African-American leaders, such as Frederick Douglass, advocated for voting rights laws and against the racism in the south.
  • Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965.
  • Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

• Jim Crow Laws

  • Jim Crow laws, enacted between 1876 and 1965, mandated de jure racial segregation in the public facilities of southern states.
  • The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965.
  • Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  • During the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, federal law provided civil rights protection in the U.S.
  • In Oklahoma, for instance, anyone qualified to vote before 1866, or related to someone qualified to vote before 1866 (a kind of "grandfather clause"), was exempted from the literacy requirement; the only persons who could vote before that year were white male Americans.

• The Flowering of Black Freedom Struggle

  • On March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery .
  • Eight days after the first march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress.
  • Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which suspended poll taxes, literacy tests, and other subjective voter tests.
  • Blacks' regaining the power to vote changed the political landscape of the South.
  • When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states of the U.S.

• Additional Factors: Gender, Age, Religion, Race, and Ethnicity

  • Discriminatory practices kept the turnout rate of African-Americans low until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  • Eventually, civil rights protests and litigation eliminated many barriers to voting.
  • In 2008, 48 percent of Asian Americans turned out to vote.
  • The most prominent example of this in American politics is the Christian right, which consists of right-wing Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies.
  • About 15% of the electorate in the United States supports the Christian right.

• The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

  • The three Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 were part of the voting rights movement underway in Selma, Alabama.
  • By highlighting racial injustice in the South, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.
  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which restored and protected voting rights.
  • Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act secured voting rights for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South.
  • The Fair Housing Act of 1968 (known also as the Civil Rights Act of 1968), which banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

• African Americans

  • At the end of the war, the fifteenth amendment, ratified in 1870, banned any state from denying the right to vote to any adult male citizen based on his race.
  • While the fifteenth amendment provided legal protection for voting rights based on race, during the Jim Crow era, politicians created new institutions to suppress the vote of Black residents.
  • In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed.
  • In 1965, the Voting Rights Act established federal oversight of election regulations, and banned voter qualifications or prerequisites that limited the right to vote on account of race or color.
  • This act removed a large institutional barrier to voting and helped to further protect voting rights.