Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose aim was to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote, and it was also the basis of his presidency to better American’s way of life by creating stronger voting-rights laws. Although the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870 and prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous servitude,” discriminatory practices were still used to prevent African Americans from being able to vote, including annual poll taxes and literacy tests.

Voting rights activists were subject to multiple forms of mistreatment and violence, including during the Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights in the spring of 1965 when activists were beaten and bloodied when met by police who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas, and whips after refusing to turn back. Days after the march, Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation and while in a joint session with Congress, outlined the ways officials denied African Americans the right to vote through discriminatory practices. Annual poll taxes were put and place and required citizens to pay taxes over a span of two years before the next election and placed a burden upon blacks who couldn’t afford it and even poor whites in the South.

African Americans were also forced to take literacy tests for election officials to make sure that they couldn’t vote, due to the fact that they suffered a high rate of illiteracy because of centuries of oppression and poverty. These literacy tests sometimes involved reciting the entire U.S. Constitution or even explaining the most complex provisions of the state law, that even most rich, wealthy white people couldn’t do and even African American college students couldn’t pass. In most cases intimidation often influenced African Americans to not vote because they would often be threatened with losing their job, denial of credit, threats of eviction, subject to verbal abuse by white voting clerks, and even threatened with being lynched.

The Voting Rights Act being passed allowed for African Americans to vote on representatives and feel a sense of equality in society. It is one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.