The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its echoes in 2020
Fifty-five years later, the VRA still leaves it mark
Presidential candidates in hot pursuit of the crucial southern Black vote are now so much a part of the quadrennial election landscape that we sometimes forget it was not always this way: little more than fifty years ago, there was virtually no southern Black vote to pursue. While the constitutional right to cast a ballot had been the law of the land for nearly a century (at least for men,) a potent combination of Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright violence systematically kept Black Americans in the South from exercising their right to vote.
And so might Black lives have continued to be overlooked at the ballot box, but for one historic piece of legislation — the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which finally put the weight and enforcement muscle of the federal government behind the Fifteenth Amendment.
The brutal battle for passage of the VRA is a tale with two great protagonists: the indomitable civil rights movement, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, and President Lyndon Johnson. The alliance forged between these two powerful forces was a shaky affair, often strained to the breaking point. But somehow it held — long enough, anyway, to produce what is by nearly every account the most consequential piece of civil rights legislation in American history.
Within two years of its passage, the 1965 law had led to dramatic increases in black voter registration throughout the South. In Mississippi alone, the increase was tenfold — from 6% in 1965 to 60% in 1967. Across eleven southern states, 800,000 citizens of color added their names to the registration rolls, and that was just the beginning.
How this all happened — how a White southerner thrust suddenly into the Oval Office found common cause with a civil rights movement that would not be denied — is the story told in episode five of “LBJ and the Great Society.” Narrated by Melody Barnes, a former senior aide to President Barack Obama, the series uses largely unheard audio archives from the LBJ Library to open a window on a transformative moment in U.S. history, and the towering, complicated figure at the center of it all.
Southern African-Americans weren’t the only people enfranchised by the bill. In 1975, the VRA was amended with the addition of Section 203 to protect Americans that weren’t English literate, stating:
“Whenever any State or political subdivision [covered by the section] provides registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, it shall provide them in the language of the applicable minority group as well as in the English language.”
Spanish is the second most common language spoken in the United States (after English), and as Latinos are expected to become the largest minority group in the American electorate in 2020, their political concerns are taking the stage now more than ever before.
Demographic tides in the U.S. will continue to change. But it is on the grounds of the Voting Rights Act that each American, regardless of their race, language, or ability, stands to make civic change by casting their ballot. Decades after his presidency, LBJ’s legacy is not done shaping our society.
This article was written with contributions from Steve Atlas, Executive Producer of “LBJ and the Great Society.” Listen to “LBJ and the Great Society” every Tuesday, wherever you listen to podcasts.
