U.S. Voting Rights Act Facts
The 15th Amendment approved in 1870 had given black males the right to vote.
In the years between the Civil War and 1965 some states - mostly in the south - enacted a variety of rules designed to deny blacks the vote and they were enforced legally as well as through intimidation and violence.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act shortly after state troopers and others used whips and clubs to attack civil rights marchers on a bridge in Selma, Alabama in March 1965.
The act was passed by Congress and signed by Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.
It outlawed race-based restrictions on voting, including poll taxes and literacy tests.
It set up federal oversight of states which had a history of discriminatory elections practices.
Within four years nearly 1 million black voters were registered.
The number of black elected officials in the south more than doubled after the 1966 elections.
The law has an expiration date and has been renewed and amended five times, most recently in 2006.
Current law expires in 2031 but a portion allowing federal oversight in specific states was overturned in 2013 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Two bills are pending in the U.S. Congress to update the section overturned by the Court.
Source: Congressional Research Service
U.S. Voting Rights Act Facts
The 15th Amendment approved in 1870 had given black males the right to vote.
In the years between the Civil War and 1965 some states - mostly in the south - enacted a variety of rules designed to deny blacks the vote and they were enforced legally as well as through intimidation and violence.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act shortly after state troopers and others used whips and clubs to attack civil rights marchers on a bridge in Selma, Alabama in March 1965.
The act was passed by Congress and signed by Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.
It outlawed race-based restrictions on voting, including poll taxes and literacy tests.
It set up federal oversight of states which had a history of discriminatory elections practices.
Within four years nearly 1 million black voters were registered.
The number of black elected officials in the south more than doubled after the 1966 elections.
The law has an expiration date and has been renewed and amended five times, most recently in 2006.
Current law expires in 2031 but a portion allowing federal oversight in specific states was overturned in 2013 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Two bills are pending in the U.S. Congress to update the section overturned by the Court.
Source: Congressional Research Service
Battles are still being fought over voting rights 50 years after a landmark federal law, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, eliminated laws that kept blacks from voting and led to dramatic increases in the numbers of black Americans registered to vote and holding elected office.
On one side of the fight over voting access are those who say the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first black president brought new vigor to efforts to restrict voting, not only for blacks but for other minorities and low income people.
“You still hear today the same echoes of arguments that you heard in the 1960s,” said John Feldmeir, a professor of political science at Wright State University.
At an anniversary celebration held at the Old Courthouse in downtown Dayton Thursday, speaker after speaker made reference to recent efforts in multiple states to place new restrictions on voting — including mandated photo identification, reduced early voting opportunities, and limits on voter registration efforts.
But Joshua Eck, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, said Ohio has some of the best rules in the country for early voting — giving voters 28 days before the election to cast ballots, as well as evening and weekend hours for in-person voting closer to Election Day.
Ohio’s voter identification law requires voters to show photo identification or a utility bill or document with their name and address, Eck said during a phone interview on Wednesday.
Husted often says that he supports laws and policies that make it “easy to vote and hard to cheat” and he supports online registration now being considered in the Ohio legislature. He also supported the constitutional amendment reforming legislative district redistricting that will be on the November ballot, Eck said.
“I think that Ohio has some of the most voter-friendly laws in the country,” said Senate Majority Whip Larry Obhof, R-Medina,who spoke by phone on Wednesday.
Horrifying images
The Voting Rights Act was signed on Aug. 6, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who proposed it to Congress after the nation was horrified by images of state troopers attacking civil rights marchers on a Selma, Ala., bridge in March 1965.
That march had followed increasing civil rights activism and violence, including the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, beatings of activists and bombings of homes, churches and buildings by civil rights opponents.
The act differed from earlier civil rights laws because it gave the federal government unprecedented enforcement power and the ability to pre-empt new discriminatory voting laws. While it was repeatedly challenged in court, it was renewed and amended five times and the law’s basic parts remained in effect until 2013.
But that year the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a section that gave the federal government oversight over elections law changes in states — mostly in the south — that had a history of racial discrimination in voting practices and laws.
Legislation to change the law to restore that federal oversight has languished in Congress for nearly 18 months.
“We need to be outraged as a country at what is going on in our country,” said Ruth Thompson-Miller, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Dayton. “This is our country and that’s a basic right: the freedom to vote without any sort of intimidation and restriction. Until we as a nation get mad enough and stand up on our two feet and start protesting these rules and regulations I don’t think anything will happen.”
Deep concern
Interviews with local civil rights activists, public officials and experts found deep concern over new restrictions on voting, including some in Ohio, which garnered national attention in recent years for proposals to restrict the early in-person voting that has been popular with black voters and to require voter identification.
“I think we still have a lot of obstacles, a lot of things put into our paths to keep us from advancing,” said Jessie Gooding, 88, former chairman of the Dayton chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
After the 2004 presidential election, voting opportunities were expanded in response to the long lines that kept some people from casting ballots. But in recent years, arguments of fairness, cost and fraud have all been used to roll back some of those voting windows.
Thompson-Miller called the recent restrictions on voting another form of “voter intimidation.”
“It’s the same old Jim Crow with a new set of clothes,” she said. “It seems to be getting worse and worse with African-American and Hispanic citizens being unable to vote.”
No one suggests things are as bad as they once were. Only a few decades ago Southern states routinely denied blacks the ability to register and to vote, even though the 15th Amendment gave black males the right to vote in 1870 and the 19th Amendment gave it to women in 1919.
“In the South you just didn’t have the right to vote. You didn’t have any rights at all,” said Gooding, who was born in Louisiana. “(It was ) whatever white folks said. White folks was the law.”
Former Dayton Foundation Chairman John E. Moore Sr., 92, said his parents did what many black southerners did. They headed north.
“My father particularly was a real proponent of voting and he experienced some of the kinds of things that were done with poll taxes and the like in the South. But when he came to Dayton he was pleased, he was very animated and really protected his right to vote,” said Moore, who retired as chief of civilian personnel at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Both Gooding and Moore said there was also plenty of discrimination in the North as well.
“You learned to stay alive and work within the framework of society,” Moore said.
Voting apathy
People like Springfield Mayor Warren Copeland say they are disheartened by the level of apathy they see today, particularly among younger people, after so many people fought and even lost their lives to win the right to vote.
“This low voter turnout and apathy is because people say, ‘Why? What’s the use? My vote is not going to count.’ And that’s sad,” said Pat Meadows, a community volunteer and former executive director of the National Conference for Community and Justice of Greater Dayton.
Steven DeLue, political science professor emeritus at Miami University, said winning the right to vote was key to winning other civil rights battles.
“The fear is that we will backdoor into a segregated society again if voting rights are not protected in full, in the spirit of the 15th Amendment and in the spirit of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” DeLue said “We have to be very careful that we don’t backdoor ourselves into a return to the horrors of a segregated society. We don’t want to return to that situation where you have two Americas.”
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