6 agos 1965 anni - The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Descrizione:
While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most important civil rights legislation of the 20th century, the voting rights section of the act was not up to the task of ensuring equal voting rights and access to political participation.
As evidenced by Freedom Summer and the reception of the Democratic Party leaders gave the MFDP at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, there was a need for further legislation.
However, the Johnson administration, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate had only just finished their hard fight over the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and to move to another related bill as quickly through the legislative obstacle course of committees, floor amendments, votes, a conference committee and more votes, was not feasible.
Yet voting rights activists would not rest.
In January 1965, the SCLC, led by Martin Luther King, Jr, built upon previous campaigns in Selma, Alabama.
On 7 March, which would become known as "Bloody Sunday", a group of more than 500 assembled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge under the leadership of the SNCC's John Lewis and the SCLC's Hosea Williams.
Eve though Selma's mayor had hoped to minimize the effect of the protest by limiting confrontation and minimizing police involvement, Selma police and Alabama patrolmen responded to the beginning of the protest march with tear gas, billy clubs and riders on horseback with bull whips.
More than 50 people were injured and images of the beatings appeared on evening news programmes across the country.
The campaign showed once again the extent to which white supremacists had gone and go to prevent African Americans from voting.
The heightened pressure of the events in Selma motivated President Johnson and the US Congress to act.
The result of these events was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was written passed and signed into law by 6 August 1965, a rare legislative time frame of four months.
The act outlawed literacy tests and directed the US Department of Justice to challenge poll taxes, which it did.
The act also gave the Attorney General the power to assign federal examiners to observe and direct voter registration where less than half of the eligible residents were registered to vote.
The effect of the law was swift: within two years more than half of southern African Americans of legal age were registered to vote and in Mississippi the percentage of eligible African Americans registered to vote moved from the lowest to the highest in the South.
As the Congress for Racial Equality states, "The law's effects were wide and powerful. By 1968, nearly 60% of eligible African Americans were registered to vote in Mississippi, and other southern states showed similar improvement. Between 1965 and 1990, the number of black state legislators and members of Congress rose from two to 160".
Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:
U.S. Civil Rights Movement
Data:
