February 22 - The Voting Rights Act of 1965

Today we honor the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark legislation that "...outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. This 'act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution' was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified."

The key of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is that it was truly transformative for African-American voting rights. In Alabama and other states, voter suppression methods- such as grandfather clauses, literacy tests, poll taxes, and other obstacles- had virtually eliminated the Black vote and held Black registrants and voter turnout at a staggeringly low number.

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Caitlyn CobbVoting Rights, #VRABlackHistory, alabama, SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Fred Shuttlesworth, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther King, MLK, James Bevel, Children's Crusade, The Children's Crusade, Dorothy Cotton, Civil Rights Movement, BlackHistoryMonth, Black History Month 2020, Black women in the women's suffrage movement, Ella Baker, Ella Josephine Baker, Mississippi Freedom Summer, Amelia Platts Boynton RobinsonComment