What did the Voting Right Acts of 1965 enable (allow) federal officials to do?

The Voting Rights Deed of 1965, signed into law past President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Human activity is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

Watch: The Civil Rights Motion on HISTORY Vault

Selma to Montgomery March

Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in a landslide victory and used this mandate to push button for legislation he believed would improve the American way of life, such as stronger voting-rights laws.

After the Civil War, the 15th Subpoena, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on "race, colour or previous condition of servitude." Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, diverse discriminatory practices were used to preclude African Americans, specially those in the S, from exercising their right to vote.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence. One event that outraged many Americans occurred on March vii, 1965, when peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips subsequently they refused to plough dorsum.

Some protesters were severely browbeaten and bloodied, and others ran for their lives. The incident was captured on national telly.

In the wake of the shocking incident, Johnson chosen for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March fifteen, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

READ More: When Did African Americans Go the Correct to Vote?

Literacy Tests

Black people attempting to vote frequently were told by election officials that they had gotten the appointment, fourth dimension or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they had filled out an application incorrectly. Black people, whose population suffered a high charge per unit of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would exist forced to accept literacy tests, which they sometimes failed.

Johnson likewise told Congress that voting officials, primarily in Southern states, had been known to force Black voters to "recite the entire Constitution or explicate the most complex provisions of country laws," a task most white voters would take been hard-pressed to reach. In some cases, even Black people with college degrees were turned abroad from the polls.

Coil to Keep

READ MORE: How Jim Crow-Era Laws Suppressed the African American Vote for Generations

Voting Rights Deed Signed into Police

The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate past a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965. Subsequently debating the pecker for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the neb by a vote of 333-85 on July 9.

Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on Baronial 6, 1965, with Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony.

The human activity banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than fifty percent of the non-white population had registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. chaser general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.

In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll taxes in land elections were banned in 1966 past the U.Due south. Supreme Court.

Voter Turnout Rises in the South

Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak, and information technology often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of Black people in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo.

Still, the Voting Rights Act gave African American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi lonely, voter turnout amongst Blackness people increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

TIMELINE: Voting Rights in the United States

Changes to the Voting Rights Act

Since its passage, the Voting Rights Human activity has been amended to include such features as the protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens. It has as well been walked back. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a five-4 vote that constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated. In the wake of the Shelby Canton five. Holder decision, several states began enacting laws limiting voter access, including ID requirements, limits on early voting, mail-in voting and more.

READ More: Civil Rights Motility Timeline

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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act

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