Voting Rights Act of 1965
Vote no matter what race you are!
What were the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ?!?!
It was a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination in voting. It was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act allowed for a mass enfranchisement of racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is widely considered to be one of the most effective pieces of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the United States
The Movement has begun!
Civil Rights leaders all together
LBJ and MLK
LBJ passing the Law
How did this change things?
The law had an immediate remedial effect on racial discrimination in voting. The suspension of literacy tests and appointment of federal examiners and observers to covered jurisdictions allowed for high numbers of prohitbited racial minorities to register to vote. Nearly 250,000 African Americans registered to vote in 1965, and one-third of them were registered by federal examiners. In covered jurisdictions, less than a third of the African American population was registered in 1965 by 1967, this number increased to more than half and a majority of African American residents were registered to vote in 9 of the 13 Southern states.