Editing Voting Rights Act of 1965 (section)

==Background==
{{further|Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction era}}
As initially ratified, the [[United States Constitution]] granted each state complete discretion to determine voter qualifications for its residents.<ref>United States Constitution art. I, sec. 2, cl. 1</ref><ref name="Bending">{{cite book|last=May|first=Gary|title=Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy|publisher=Basic Books|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-0-465-01846-8|date=April 9, 2013|edition=Kindle|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/bendingtowardjus0000mayg}}</ref>{{rp|50}} After the [[Civil War (United States)|Civil War]], the three [[Reconstruction Amendments]] were ratified and limited this discretion. The [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]] (1865) prohibits [[slavery in the United States|slavery]] "except as a punishment for crime"; the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] (1868) grants [[citizenship in the United States|citizenship]] to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees every person [[Due Process Clause|due process]] and [[Equal Protection Clause|equal protection]] rights; and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifteenth Amendment]] (1870) provides that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." These Amendments also empower [[Congress of the United States|Congress]] to [[Congressional power of enforcement|enforce]] their provisions through "appropriate legislation".<ref>{{cite web|title=Landmark Legislation: Thirteenth, Fourteenth, & Fifteenth Amendments|url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilWarAmendments.htm|publisher=United States Senate|access-date=June 25, 2015}}</ref>

To enforce the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress passed the [[Enforcement Acts]] in the 1870s. The acts criminalized the obstruction of a citizen's [[voting rights]] and provided for federal supervision of the electoral process, including [[voter registration]].<ref name=Carolina>{{Source-attribution|sentence=yes|''[[South Carolina v. Katzenbach]]'', {{ussc|383|301|1966}}}}</ref>{{rp|310}} However, in 1875 the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] struck down parts of the legislation as unconstitutional in ''[[United States v. Cruikshank]]'' and ''[[United States v. Reese]]''.<ref name=democracy>{{cite book|last1=Issacharoff|first1=Samuel|last2=Karlan|first2=Pamela S.|last3=Pildes|first3=Richard H.|title=The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process|year=2012|publisher=Foundation Press|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-1-59941-935-0|edition=4th}}</ref>{{rp|97}} After the [[Reconstruction Era]] ended in 1877, enforcement of these laws became erratic, and in 1894, Congress repealed most of their provisions.<ref name=Carolina />{{rp|310}}

Southern states generally sought to disenfranchise racial minorities during and after Reconstruction. From 1868 to 1888, [[electoral fraud]] and violence throughout the South suppressed the [[African-American]] vote.<ref name="Direct">{{cite web|last1=Anderson|first1=Elizabeth|last2=Jones|first2=Jeffery|title=Race, Voting Rights, and Segregation: Direct Disenfranchisement|work=The Geography of Race in the United States|url=http://www.umich.edu/~lawrace/disenfranchise1.htm|date=September 2002|publisher=University of Michigan|access-date=August 3, 2013}}</ref> From 1888 to 1908, Southern states legalized disenfranchisement by enacting [[Jim Crow laws]]; they amended their [[State constitution (United States)|constitutions]] and passed legislation to impose various voting restrictions, including [[literacy test]]s, [[Poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]], property-ownership requirements, moral character tests, requirements that voter registration applicants interpret particular documents, and [[grandfather clause]]s that allowed otherwise-ineligible persons to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded many African Americans whose grandfathers had been slaves or otherwise ineligible).<ref name="Carolina" /><ref name="Direct" /> During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld efforts to discriminate against racial minorities. In ''[[Giles v. Harris]]'' (1903), the court held that regardless of the Fifteenth Amendment, the [[federal judiciary of the United States|judiciary]] did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote.<ref name=democracy />{{rp|100}}

[[File:Bloody Sunday-Alabama police attack.jpeg|thumb|upright=1.1|alt=refer to caption|Alabama police in 1965 attack voting rights marchers on [[Selma to Montgomery marches#"Bloody Sunday" events|"Bloody Sunday"]], the first of the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]]]]
Prior to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 there were several efforts to stop the disenfranchisement of black voters by Southern states,.<ref name=DOJvra65 /> Besides the above-mentioned literacy tests and poll taxes other bureaucratic restrictions were used to deny them the right to vote. African Americans also "risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register or vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered voters, and they had very little, if any, political power, either locally or nationally."<ref>{{cite web |title=Voting Rights Act (1965) |url=https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=100 |publisher=Our Documents |access-date=March 13, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200925101516/https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=100 |archive-date=September 25, 2020}}</ref> In the 1950s the [[Civil Rights Movement]] increased pressure on the [[United States federal government|federal government]] to protect the voting rights of racial minorities. In 1957, Congress passed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction: the [[Civil Rights Act of 1957]]. This legislation authorized the attorney general to sue for [[injunctive relief]] on behalf of persons whose Fifteenth Amendment rights were denied, created the [[United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division|Civil Rights Division]] within the [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] to enforce civil rights through litigation, and created the [[Commission on Civil Rights]] to investigate voting rights deprivations. Further protections were enacted in the [[Civil Rights Act of 1960]], which allowed federal courts to appoint referees to conduct voter registration in jurisdictions that engaged in voting discrimination against racial minorities.<ref name="DOJintro" />

Although these acts helped empower courts to remedy violations of federal voting rights, strict legal standards made it difficult for the Department of Justice to successfully pursue litigation. For example, to win a discrimination lawsuit against a state that maintained a literacy test, the department needed to prove that the rejected voter-registration applications of racial minorities were comparable to the accepted applications of whites. This involved comparing thousands of applications in each of the state's counties in a process that could last months. The department's efforts were further hampered by resistance from local election officials, who would claim to have misplaced the voter registration records of racial minorities, remove registered racial minorities from the [[electoral roll]]s, and resign so that voter registration ceased. Moreover, the department often needed to appeal lawsuits several times before the judiciary provided relief because many federal [[United States district court|district court]] judges opposed racial minority suffrage. Thus, between 1957 and 1964, the African-American voter registration rate in the South increased only marginally even though the department litigated 71 voting rights lawsuits.<ref name=democracy />{{rp|514}} Efforts to stop the disfranchisement by the Southern states had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual, because the "Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew."<ref name=DOJvra65 />

Congress responded to rampant discrimination against racial minorities in [[public accommodations]] and [[government services]] by passing the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]]. The act included some voting rights protections; it required registrars to equally administer literacy tests in writing to each voter and to accept applications that contained minor errors, and it created a [[rebuttable presumption]] that persons with a sixth-grade education were sufficiently literate to vote.<ref name=Bending />{{rp|97}}<ref>{{cite web|title=Public Law 88-352|url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/CivilRightsActOf1964.pdf|location=Title I|access-date=October 19, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964|url=http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64text.htm|work=CongressLink|publisher=Dirksen Congressional Center|
archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206191323/http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64text.htm|archive-date=December 6, 2014|access-date=March 26, 2015}}</ref> However, despite lobbying from civil rights leaders, the Act did not prohibit most forms of voting discrimination.<ref name=eyes>{{cite book|last=Williams|first=Juan|title=Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965|year=2002|publisher=Penguin Books|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-0-14-009653-8|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/eyesonprizeameri00will}}</ref>{{rp|253}} [[President of the United States|President]] [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] recognized this, and shortly after the 1964 elections in which [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]] gained overwhelming majorities in both chambers of Congress, he privately instructed Attorney General [[Nicholas Katzenbach]] to draft "the goddamndest, toughest voting rights act that you can".<ref name=Bending />{{rp|48–50}} However, Johnson did not publicly push for the legislation at the time; his advisers warned him of political costs for vigorously pursuing a voting rights bill so soon after Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Johnson was concerned that championing voting rights would endanger his [[Great Society]] reforms by angering [[Southern Democrats]] in Congress.<ref name=Bending />{{rp|47–48, 50–52}}
[[File:Fannie Lou Hamer 1964-08-22.jpg|alt=Fannie Lou Hamer is a Black woman wearing a floral dress. She is mid-speaking at a convention. She is seated. The photo is in black and white.|thumb|Fannie Lou Hamer, founder of Freedom Farm Cooperative, speaks on behalf of SNCC regarding African-American rights to vote.]]
Following the 1964 elections, civil rights organizations such as the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (SCLC) and the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC) pushed for federal action to protect the voting rights of racial minorities.<ref name=eyes />{{rp|254–255}} Their efforts culminated in protests in [[Alabama]], particularly in the city of [[Selma, Alabama|Selma]], where County Sheriff [[Jim Clark (sheriff)|Jim Clark]]'s police force violently resisted African-American voter registration efforts. Speaking about the voting rights push in Selma, [[James Forman]] of SNCC said: "Our strategy, as usual, was to force the U.S. government to intervene in case there were arrests—and if they did not intervene, that inaction would once again prove the government was not on our side and thus intensify the development of a mass consciousness among blacks. Our slogan for this drive was '[[One Man, One Vote]].{{'"}}<ref name=eyes/>{{rp|255}}

In January 1965, [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], [[James Bevel]],<ref name=Garrow>{{cite book|editor1-last=Garrow|editor1-first=David J.|title=We Shall Overcome: The Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s|year=1989|publisher=Carlson Publishing|last=Kryn|first=Randy|chapter=James L. Bevel: The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement|location=Brooklyn, NY|isbn=978-0-926019-02-7}}</ref><ref name=Kryn>{{cite web|last=Kryn|first=Randy|title=Movement Revision Research Summary Regarding James Bevel|url=http://cfm40.middlebury.edu/node/287|work=Chicago Freedom Movement|publisher=Middlebury College|access-date=April 7, 2014|archive-date=March 3, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303174523/http://cfm40.middlebury.edu/node/287|url-status=dead}}</ref> and other civil rights leaders organized several [[Selma to Montgomery marches|peaceful demonstrations in Selma]], which were violently attacked by police and white counter-protesters. Throughout January and February, these protests received national media coverage and drew attention to the issue of voting rights. King and other demonstrators were arrested during a march on February 1 for violating an anti-parade [[local ordinance|ordinance]]; this inspired similar marches in the following days, causing hundreds more to be arrested.<ref name=eyes />{{rp|259–261}} On February 4, civil rights leader [[Malcolm X]] gave a militant speech in Selma in which he said that many African Americans did not support King's nonviolent approach;<ref name=eyes />{{rp|262}} he later privately said that he wanted to frighten whites into supporting King.<ref name=Bending />{{rp|69}} The next day, King was released and a letter he wrote addressing voting rights, "Letter From A Selma Jail", appeared in ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref name=eyes />{{rp|262}}

With increasing national attention focused on Selma and voting rights, President Johnson reversed his decision to delay voting rights legislation. On February 6, he announced he would send a proposal to Congress.<ref name="Bending" />{{rp|69}} Johnson did not reveal the proposal's content or disclose when it would come before Congress.<ref name="eyes" />{{rp|264}}

On February 18 in [[Marion, Alabama]], state troopers violently broke up a nighttime voting-rights march during which officer [[James Bonard Fowler]] shot and killed young African-American protester [[Jimmie Lee Jackson]], who was unarmed and protecting his mother.<ref name=eyes />{{rp|265}}<ref>{{cite news|last=Fleming|first=John|title=The Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson|url=http://www.annistonstar.com/view/full_story/2746471/article-The-Death-of-Jimmie-Lee-Jackson|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140113092652/http://www.annistonstar.com/view/full_story/2746471/article-The-Death-of-Jimmie-Lee-Jackson|archive-date=January 13, 2014|newspaper=The Anniston Star|date=March 6, 2005|access-date=March 16, 2015}}</ref> Spurred by this event, and at the initiation of Bevel,<ref name=eyes />{{rp|267}}<ref name=Garrow /><ref name=Kryn /><ref>{{cite book|last=Fager|first=Charles|title=Selma, 1965: The March That Changed the South|date=July 1985|publisher=Beacon Press|location=Boston, MA|isbn=978-0-8070-0405-0|edition=2nd}}</ref>{{rp|81–86}} on March 7 SCLC and SNCC began the first of the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]], in which Selma residents intended to march to Alabama's capital, [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]], to highlight voting rights issues and present Governor [[George Wallace]] with their grievances. On the first march, demonstrators were stopped by state and county police on horseback at the [[Edmund Pettus Bridge]] near Selma. The police shot [[tear gas]] into the crowd and trampled protesters. Televised footage of the scene, which became known as [[Selma to Montgomery marches#"Bloody Sunday" events|"Bloody Sunday"]], generated outrage across the country.<ref name=democracy />{{rp|515}} A second march was held on March 9, which became known as [[Selma to Montgomery marches#Second march: "Turnaround Tuesday"|"Turnaround Tuesday"]]. That evening, three white [[Unitarian Universalism|Unitarian]] ministers who participated in the march were attacked on the street and beaten with clubs by four [[Ku Klux Klan]] members.<ref name="The March to Montgomery">[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.htm The March to Montgomery] ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive.</ref> The worst injured was Reverend [[James Reeb]] from [[Boston]], who died on Thursday, March 11.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/witnesses/reeb.htm |title=James Reeb |first=Neil |last=Baumgartner |work=Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia |publisher=[[Ferris State University]] |date=December 2012 |access-date=November 16, 2020}}</ref>

In the wake of the events in Selma, President Johnson, addressing a televised joint session of Congress on March 15, called on legislators to enact expansive voting rights legislation. In his speech, he used the words "[[we shall overcome]]", adopting the rallying cry of the civil rights movement.<ref name="eyes" />{{rp|278}}<ref>{{cite news|last=Wicker|first=Tom|title=Johnson Urges Congress at Joint Session to Pass Law Insuring Negro Vote|url=https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0315.html|access-date=August 3, 2013|newspaper=The New York Times|date=March 15, 1965}}</ref> The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced in Congress two days later while civil rights leaders, now under the protection of federal troops, led a march of 25,000 people from Selma to Montgomery.<ref name="democracy" />{{rp|516}}<ref name="eyes" />{{rp|279, 282}}