Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, yet African Americans faced tremendous obstacles to voting. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was essential in the fight against discriminatory voting practices.
- Congress and the Voting Rights Act of 1965Despite the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, African Americans in the South faced tremendous obstacles to voting. This page from the National Archives includes information and primary sources on the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- History of Federal Voting Rights Law: The Voting Rights Act of 1965The website from the United States Department of Justice details the history of federal voting rights laws, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Voting Rights Act of 1965: History.comThe Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.
Resources & Research
- Voting Rights Act of 1965: Credo ReferenceA research topic page from Credo Reference covering the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This guide includes reference materials and images on the topic. A helpful research map highlights key topics.
- The Voting Rights Act of 1965- NPRA series on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Covers the history of it and how it has impacted America.
- Selma, Alabama, and the 1965 Voting Rights CampaignIn this episode Clay Carson and Mira Foster discuss the events, including three marches, that shaped the 1965 Voting Rights Campaign in Selma
Streaming Media
- Answering the Call: The American Struggle for the Right to VoteThe bloody attacks of protestors in Selma in 1965 led to the historic protection of all Americans' right to vote. The film explores a cherished family story of Selma and the current state of voter suppression in America.Fifty one years ago, the nation watched in horror as bloody images of police attacks on civil rights protestors in Selma, Alabama aired on television. John Witeck was a sophomore at the University of Virginia when he saw the graphic coverage of Bloody Sunday, and when Dr. King called for supporters to travel to Selma to march for justice he packed his bags and journeyed south. Fifty one years later, John and his nephew Brian Jenkins (Director) traveled back to Alabama to document John’s story of Selma, the fight for voting rights, and the evolution of the Voting Rights Act; the law that prevented voting discrimination and protected every American’s right to vote.
- Voting Rights Act of 1965The 24th Amendment set the stage for the Voting Rights Act that suspended the use of literacy tests, authorized federal examiners to supervise voter registration, and provided criminal penalties for interfering with the right to vote.
Perspectives
Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy
When the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 granted African Americans the right to vote, it seemed as if a new era of political equality was at hand. Before long, however, white segregationists across the South counterattacked, driving their black countrymen from the polls through a combination of sheer terror and insidious devices such as complex literacy tests and expensive poll taxes. Most African Americans would remain voiceless for nearly a century more, citizens in name only until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act secured their access to the ballot. In Bending Toward Justice, celebrated historian Gary May describes how black voters overcame centuries of bigotry to secure and preserve one of their most important rights as American citizens. The struggle that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act was long and torturous, and only succeeded because of the courageous work of local freedom fighters and national civil rights leaders -- as well as, ironically, the opposition of Southern segregationists and law enforcement officials, who won public sympathy for the voting rights movement by brutally attacking peaceful demonstrators. But while the Voting Rights Act represented an unqualified victory over such forces of hate, May explains that its achievements remain in jeopardy. Many argue that the 2008 election of President Barack Obama rendered the act obsolete, yet recent years have seen renewed efforts to curb voting rights and deny minorities the act's hard-won protections. Legal challenges to key sections of the act may soon lead the Supreme Court to declare those protections unconstitutional. A vivid, fast-paced history of this landmark piece of civil rights legislation, Bending Toward Justice offers a dramatic, timely account of the struggle that finally won African Americans the ballot -- although, as May shows, the fight for voting rights is by no means over.
Judgment Days
Opposites in almost every way, mortally suspicious of each other at first, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., were thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Both men sensed a historic opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that moved them, and the entire nation, toward the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources -- Johnson's taped telephone conversations, voluminous FBI wiretap logs, previously secret communications between the FBI and the president -- Nick Kotz gives us a dramatic narrative, rich in dialogue, that presents this momentous period with thrilling immediacy. Judgment Days offers needed perspective on a presidency too often linked solely to the tragedy of Vietnam. We watch Johnson applying the arm-twisting tactics that made him a legend in the Senate, and we follow King as he keeps the pressure on in the South through protest and passive resistance. King's pragmatism and strategic leadership and Johnson's deeply held commitment to a just society shaped the character of their alliance. Kotz traces the inexorable convergence of their paths to an intense joint effort that made civil rights a legislative reality at last, despite FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's vicious whispering campaign to destroy King. Judgment Days also reveals how this spirit of teamwork disintegrated. The two leaders parted bitterly over King's opposition to the Vietnam War. In this first full account of the working relationship between Johnson and King, Kotz offers a detailed, surprising account that significantly enriches our understanding of both men and their time.
The Voting Rights Act Of 1965
First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.