The Voting Rights Act of 1965

Today, most of us think of voting as an inalienable right that belongs to all Americans and cannot be taken away. Throughout history, however, many American citizens have not been allowed to vote in local and national elections, either on the basis of actual laws or discriminatory practices. Cultural and political barriers prevented racial minorities from heading to the voting booth every year. It was not until the 1960s that the United States government took serious action to make sure all citizens of the United States could safely and effectively exercise their right to vote. 

Strained Race Relations

African-Americans were first granted citizenship in the 1860s; African-American men were granted the right to vote in 1870. After the Civil War, Congress made three amendments to the Constitution to protect the rights of freed slaves. The 13th Amendment ended slavery everywhere. The 14th Amendment gave citizenship to every person born in the U.S., including recently freed slaves. The 15th Amendment reinforced the right to vote for all male citizens, regardless of race.

However, some southern states did not like these new amendments, and some whites wanted to keep blacks from having an equal place in society. They passed laws that prevented African Americans from voting. Some towns required literacy tests, which were supposed to simply prove the person could speak English well enough to understand the ballot, but in reality they were used to prevent African Americans from being able to actually vote. Others required voters to pay a tax, own property, pass morality tests, or come from certain family lines. All of these laws were designed to do one thing: prohibit members of racial minority groups from voting.

Change on the Horizon

These laws remained in place and went mostly unchallenged until the civil rights movement began in the 1950s. One of the leaders of the civil rights movement was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a minister and activist who believed that African Americans should have the same rights as whites in America. Because of the efforts of Dr. King and many other activists, the government began to make changes toward equality, including setting up a civil rights office in the Department of Justice, but it was not enough.

King organized another rally for equal rights in Selma, Alabama in early March 1965. However, Alabama state troopers violently attacked the peaceful protestors, and the whole event was broadcast on national television. This tragic event—referred to as “Bloody Sunday”—opened the eyes of many Americans across the country to the realities of racial discrimination. Over the next few weeks, civil rights activists organized and participated in more marches, sit-ins, and other demonstrations.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

These actions had a powerful effect in Washington D.C. After witnessing TV coverage of “Bloody Sunday,” President Lyndon Baines Johnson met with Alabama Governor George Wallace at the nation’s capital to discuss the civil rights situation in his state. He tried to persuade Wallace to stop the state’s harassment of the protesters. Wallace refused, so Johnson took charge of Alabama’s National Guard and sent one thousand military policemen and two thousand army troops to escort protesters on a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Meanwhile, Johnson was working on a bill that would help create the change that the protesters were demanding. On March 15, 1965, Johnson presented the bill to Congress. In August 1965, the bill was passed and signed by Johnson into law as the Voting Rights Act. The Department of Justice has called it the strongest, most effective civil rights law in our nation’s history. It has several parts:

First, it outlaws any regulation that might keep racial minorities from voting for any reason. This includes all of the tactics used in the South, such as literacy tests and poll taxes. It also prohibits gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing voting districts to have as few minority voters as possible. Proponents of the Voting Rights Act wanted everyone to be able to vote, and wanted everyone’s vote to matter equally.

Second, it identified areas in the country with large numbers of minority voters, and required that ballots be provided in multiple languages in those areas. For example, if a town had many Spanish-speaking residents, it must print its annual ballots in Spanish as well as English.

Third, it picked out certain regions with a history of severe racism. These regions had special requirements that any changes they made to their voting rules had to be cleared with the federal government. Congress wanted to make sure no local government would try to reverse the rules laid out in the new Voting Rights Act.

Long-Term Effects

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had immediate positive effects for minority voters. Nearly 250,000 black citizens registered to vote in 1965 alone. By 1967, the percentage of blacks registered to vote in the regions identified in the law as having a severe history of racism rose from 30% to over 50%. Language minority groups experienced similar increases in registration. The number of African-Americans elected to government offices more than tripled by 1980.

In a 2013 case called Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court ruled that parts of the Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional. A majority of the justices believed it was wrong to require certain states to check with the federal government every time they changed their voting laws. They also thought it was unfair to continue making these demands based on data from the 1960s.

Unfortunately, some states have taken advantage of this new ruling to rewrite certain laws in ways that might enable discrimination against minorities. For example, some states require official IDs to get into the voting booth, and some people argue that, since it costs money to get an ID, this is a form of a poll tax. A federal court recently struck down one such law in North Carolina. Other states have tried to limit the hours voting booths are open, so that working people have trouble voting on time.

Technically, Congress can still override individual changes as they arise, but critics are skeptical that Congress will actually do this. Only time will tell whether this Supreme Court decision was a mistake or not.