50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act

LBJ signs Voting Rights Act of 1965 as MLK looks on.
MLK was assassinated in 1968.

On this day in 1965, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, guarantees the rights of all American citizens to vote.

The law makes it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections designed to deny the vote to some citizens, notably blacks.

Johnson was elected Vice President under JFK. He President in November 1963 upon the JFK's assassination. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was elected in a lopsided victory and used the mandate to push for legislation he believed in, including stronger voting-rights laws.

LBJ would have taken cautious steps toward greater voter participation, but in March 1965, television viewers watched as state troopers in Selma, Alabama, attacked a group of peaceful protestors who were marching to the capitol. A week later, President Johnson gave a televised speech before Congress, in which he said:

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote ... [A]ll of us ... must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

Robert Caro, in an eloquent introduction to his bestselling book, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, volume 2 of his biography of LBJ, explains to future generations of students of history the significance of the last sentence of this quote.

Martin Luther King Jr. was watching the address at the home of a family in Selma, Ala., on television that night with some aides. None of these aides "during all the years of struggle ... had ever seen Dr. King cry." When LBJ got to "we shall overcome", "they were looking when Martin Luther King began to cry" (Caro, 1991, p. xx.)

When the president signed the legislation a few months later, MLK and other civil rights leaders were present. The law was designed to enforce the 15th Amendment of the Constitution ratified in 1870, entitling all male citizens to vote. The 1870 law was extended by the 19th Amendment 50 years later - in August 1920, when the last required state (Tennessee) ratified it - to include all women as well as men.

In his speech to Congress on March 15, 1965, Johnson outlined the ways in which election officials denied African-American citizens the vote:

• On the day of election, officials told blacks they gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that the officials were late or absent, or that the prospective voters hadn't filled out an application.
• Election officials required literacy skills.  Voting officials, primarily in southern states, had been known to force black voters to “recite the entire constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws”.
• Even blacks with college degrees were turned away from the polls. 

Caro in Master of the Senate, volume 3 of his LBJ biography, gives many vivid examples of how blacks were disenfranchised. An African-American woman who had studied hard to pass the literacy test failed her test because someone else the same day could not answer a question.

Even after the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak and even  ignored, but African-American voters now had a basis for challenging voting restrictions in Federal courts. Problems with voter suppression did not end, but they diminished. The new law was followed by a huge increase in voter turnout - in Mississippi, voter turnout among blacks rose to 59 percent in 1969, from 6 percent just five years earlier.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon extended the provisions of the Voting Rights Act and lowered the eligible voting age for all voters to 18.

Jerry Goldfeder of Stroock Stroock & Lavan offers a free update on voting rights in the USA in August 2015.

Some are deeply concerned that new moves for voter suppression threaten the achievements to date.

LBJ | Mar. 15–50 Years Since Voting-Rights Speech

The "We Shall Overcome" song has a long history.

This day in 1965 LBJ gave his famed 5-minute speech on voting rights to a joint session of Congress. It is usually called the "We Shall Overcome" speech.

Watch it here.

It is considered one of the Great American Documents. Read it here.

Eight days earlier, 600 people started to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital, Montgomery.

They followed activists John Lewis and Hosea Williams in protest against the murder of a civil-rights activist, Baptist deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson.

They marched six blocks to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Then Selma and state law enforcement officers attacked them with clubs and tear gas.

The response is remembered as "Bloody Sunday". It was televised nationally. 

Activists from all over the country immediately made plans to come to Selma, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  On Tuesday, March 9, King led marchers back to the bridge, where they knelt and prayed.

That night, a visiting white minister from Boston who had come south to march was assaulted and died two days later.

Pressure became intense for Johnson to unveil his long-promised voting rights bill. On March 13, he condemned the violence in Selma and promised to deliver the bill by March 15.

On Sunday evening, March 14, LBJ was caught up in the rising level of national outrage. He decided on a public speech. The morning of March 15, he told his chief speechwriter, Richard Goodwin, to whip one up to be delivered that evening.

Goodwin produced the speech and Johnson delivered it to Congress and to 70 million Americans watching on television. He was interrupted by applause 36 times. He said: 

Their cause must be our cause, too, because it's not just Negroes, but really, it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome... The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

After the speech, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee approached LBJ to promise hearings on the bill "the following week". Johnson replied to the effect: "That's not good enough. Get those hearing started this week and work into the night."

The following Sunday, thousands of marchers again set off from Selma. This time after marching for five days they made it to Montgomery. Martin Luther King addressed the huge crowd and explained why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not enough.

Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in August 1965.

Comment

Whatever the intent of the Selma police on Bloody Sunday, it is hard to think of any police action before or since that has done more to advance the cause it was meant to hinder.

On the other hand, the way the legislation played out was humiliating for many southerners. It looked like another defeat for the Confederacy. For traditional Roman Catholics in particular, the combination of Vatican II and aggressive civil rights enforcement was unsettling, creating an opening for GOP strategists to create a southern strategy.

On civil rights issues LBJ united the Democratic Party and, for a while, the nation, as only a southerner could do. But the Vietnam War came along and re-divided the Democratic Party, electing Richard Nixon.

(Thanks to Garrison Keillor whose post in today's Writer's Almanac inspired this one.)