Voting Rights Act of 1965

Legislation

By: Lyndon B. Johnson

Date: August 6, 1965

Source: Voting Rights Act of 1965, Public Law 89-110, 79 Stat. 437.

About the Author: Lyndon Baines Johnson served as a Democratic representative and senator from the state of Texas before being chosen by John F. Kennedy to run as vice president in 1960. Following Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Johnson became the thirty-sixth president of the United States. A champion of civil rights, Johnson helped to push the 1964 Civil Rights Act through Congress, in addition to proposing the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

INTRODUCTION

In June 1963, five months before he was assassinated, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation with a call for powerful civil rights legislation to help give minorities greater legal protection, personal freedoms, and economic opportunity. Civil rights leaders in the black community, upset with what they considered to be slow progress on civil rights at the federal level, expressed ambivalence about such legislation. Civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960 had raised hopes among African Americans, but the legislation—stripped of power by compromises with southern Democrats—had not altered the status quo, and race-based segregation in daily and political life remained the reality for African Americans in the southern United States.

In the wake of Kennedy's assassination, his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, assumed the presidency. Committed to continuing Kennedy's civil rights work, Johnson used his political connections and networking skills to appeal to the House of Representatives and Senate to pass a strong civil rights bill, one that provided blacks with protections in education, housing, law, and employment. Southern Democrats balked, but ultimately the house, and then the senate, passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, the act did not adequately protect voting rights, a key issue Johnson prepared to tackle in future legislation.

On March 15, 1965, President Johnson addressed Congress one week after violence broke out during peaceful protests by African Americans in Selma, Alabama. In Selma, the police attacked protestors led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as they prepared to march to Montgomery, Alabama. The news channels showed images of well-dressed, peaceful protestors being beaten and sprayed with water from fire hoses. A white Unitarian minister from Boston, James J. Reeb, died during the violence.

Johnson's speech was direct and to the point on the issue of voting rights for African Americans. He said, "The harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes…. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of State law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin."

The Voting Rights Act passed both houses of Congress, and President Johnson signed the bill into law on August 6, 1965. Selected excerpts from this act follow.

PRIMARY SOURCE

An Act To enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act shall be known as the "Voting Rights Act of 1965."

SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

SEC. 4. (a) To assure that the right of citizens of the United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of race or color, no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to comply with any test or device in any State….

SEC. 10. (a) The Congress finds that the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting: (i) precludes persons of limited means from voting or imposes unreasonable financial hardship upon such persons as a precondition to their exercise of the franchise, (ii) does not bear a reasonable relationship to any legitimate State interest in the conduct of elections, and (iii) in some areas has the purpose or effect of denying persons the right to vote because of race or color. Upon the basis of these findings, Congress declares that the constitutional right of citizens to vote is denied or abridged in some areas by the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting.

SEC. 11. (a) No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of this Act or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person's vote.

(b) No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for exercising any powers or duties under section 3(a), 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12(e).

(b) Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address, or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

SEC. 12. (a) Whoever shall deprive or attempt to deprive any person of any right secured by section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, or 10 or shall violate section 11(a) or (b), shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Approved August 6, 1965.

SIGNIFICANCE

The effect of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was immediate in the South; in Mississippi, the percentage of registered African American voters skyrocketed from six percent to forty-four percent. Because the law required that all counties register more than fifty percent of its citizens of voting age or face federal intervention, even intractable southern states that disagreed with civil rights legislation permitted black voter registration rather than face further erosion of states' rights and greater federal intervention.

By removing literacy tests and any qualifier for registering to vote, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 not only gave African Americans the right to vote, but also afforded them the opportunity to elect more African Americans to public office at every level of government. Black voter turnouts shortly after the act passed were as high as ninety-two percent in Tennessee and seventy-four percent in Mississippi. This marked a turning point in southern politics; African American participation in the electoral process was swift, intense, and powerful.

However, the transition was not smooth. Federal examiners were sent to many counties that did not comply with the new law, and more than one-third of all new African American voters were registered by a federal examiner. Federal observers monitored the polls to verify that African American voters were permitted to cast their ballots and to ensure that African American votes were actually counted in tallies.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was upheld and strengthened in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 1992. In 1965, fewer than 100 black citizens held elected office in the United States; twenty-five years later more than 7,200 held office. Combined with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 set in motion a dramatic change in the political landscape of the United States by ensuring that all eligible Americans, regardless of race or color, could cast their votes and have those votes counted.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Karabell, Jonathan, and Zachary Karabell. Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.

Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Web sites

John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. "Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights." 〈http://www.jfklibrary.net/j061163.htm〉 (accessed April 9, 2006).

Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. "Special Message to Congress: The American Promise." 〈http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/650315.asp〉 (accessed April 9, 2006).