Voting Rights Act
Ballot access law
The Voting Rights Act is landmark U.S. legislation enacted in 1965 to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.
It outlawed literacy tests and other barriers that Southern states had used to disenfranchise Black voters, and required federal approval before certain jurisdictions could change voting procedures.
The Voting Rights Act transformed political participation in the South.
The Supreme Court has since weakened key provisions.
- SelmaAlabama civil rights city
- good troubleNecessary moral disruption
- marchRhythmic group walk
- preclearanceApproval needed beforehand
- Justice DepartmentFederal law enforcement agency
John Lewis · Martin Luther King Jr. · racial equality · Bloody Sunday · ballot · Freedom Summer · absentee ballots · NAACP · anti-discrimination laws · federal · polling place · registration · Congress · landmark · equal protection · amendment · courthouse · enforcement
- civil rightsequal protection, civil liberties, desegregation, freedom of religion, Montgomery bus boycott
- legislaturebill, senators, senator, state legislature, legislators
- Voting Rightsenfranchisement, disenfranchisement, fair elections, poll taxes, literacy tests
- 1965Selma march, Watts riots, Sound of Music, Medicare, Medicaid
- Federal Lawsfederal laws, congressional acts, acts, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act
- LBJ EraLBJ, Great Society, Vietnam War, War on Poverty, Gulf of Tonkin
Voting Rights Actvoter suppression
Tactics discouraging ballot access
poll taxes · literacy tests · Jim Crow laws · disenfranchisement · grandfather clause
Voting Rights ActJim Crow laws
Post-Reconstruction racial separation statutes
Plessy v. Ferguson · Dred Scott decision · fugitive slave laws · segregation · Chinese Exclusion Act
Voting Rights Actnullification
Formal cancellation of validity
right, voting, rights, voter, votes, voters, rightful, rightfully, rightfulness