Voting rights act of 1965

Weston Hill Theoharis 

1 December 2021

FYS 1000

Voting Rights Of 1965

"The civil rights movement had galvanized the country by the 1950s." In 1957, 1960, and 1964, Congress passed Civil Rights Acts, but none of them were strong enough to prevent local officials from discriminating against voters. On March 7, 1965, Alabama state police attacked nonviolent voting rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. The violence was captured on camera by news crews on what became known as "Bloody Sunday." Many Americans and members of Congress began to question whether current civil rights laws would ever be successfully enforced by local governments. The subject before Congress was whether the federal government should assume the ability to register voters in order to secure the right to vote. Because voting qualifications were previously determined by state and local officials, federal voting rights protection constituted a substantial shift in the constitutional power balance between the states and the federal government. https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was created by Congress with the goal of increasing the number of persons registered to vote in places where there had been previous prejudice. In certain jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination, the Act prohibited literacy tests and provided for the appointment of Federal examiners (with the power to register qualified persons to vote). Furthermore, without "preclearance" from the US Attorney General or the District Court for Washington, DC, local jurisdictions could not change voting policies or processes. The ability to register voters was transferred from state and municipal officials to the federal government under this law. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/voting-rights-act-1965 

 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was quickly challenged in the courts because it was the most important statutory shift in the relationship between the federal and state governments in the domain of voting since the Reconstruction era. Several major Supreme Court opinions supporting the law's validity were made between 1965 and 1969. https://history.house.gov/Records-and-Research/Featured-Content/Engrossed-Bill/

 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 shifted political power dynamics in the South. Over half a million Southern blacks had registered to vote by the middle of 1966, and nearly 400 black people had been elected to office by 1968.

 

Many white southerners began to switch to the Republicans when African Americans joined the Democratic Party. This trend was made by Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," which was aimed to attract white Southerners to the Republican Party. As African Americans began to vote, some Southern Democrats, such as George Wallace, began to abandon their segregationist in order to appeal to black voters. At the federal level, President Johnson selected Robert C. Weaver, the first black cabinet member, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, in 1967.

 

By November, the county had 8,000 new black voters, not coincidentally, a new sheriff after the May elections, leaving Jim Clark behind. 

 

Though the repercussions were so severe, the new law had a similar effect wherever a white minority had pastly dominated with an big fist. The Justice Department could now dispatch examiners to any state or county if, as of the 1964 presidential election, a literacy test or other deterrent to black registration was in place, and turnout or registration for that election had fallen below 50% of the voting age population.