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Summary Of Give Us The Ballot By Aar Berman

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Based on the book Give Us the Ballot by Ari Berman, the book focuses on the voting rights for African Americans and the struggle they had to go through to obtaining the right to vote in the United States. Berman also describes the difficulties African Americans faced even after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. The voting Rights Act wanted to eliminate many obstacles that occurred when it came to voting, which included literacy tests, poll taxes or any racial discrimination that prevented African Americans or other minorities from voting. The voting Rights Act operated and increased democracy participation in the south after the 1960’s. In December 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964 and described it as, “a …show more content…

Although before and after the VRA was passed there was violent and discriminatory acts that occurred. Especially the violent acts between the white and back communities. An example of the violent acts between these two communities is the event that occurred at the Selma to Montgomery march. “The state troopers and Clark’s posse chased and beat the fleeing marchers all the way back to the Brown Chapel.” State troopers and other authorities beat unarmed protesters and attacked them with tear gas, bully clubs, and with horrible violence. This horrendous event is now remembered and commonly known as “Bloody Sunday”. “Bloody Sunday” was not the only time that marchers where met with horrible violence. “…the murder of the white Detroit housewife Viola Liuzzo, a thirty-nine-year-old mother of five gunned down on Route 80 by Alabama Klansmen after she had attended the Selma to Montgomery march…” The violence that was met with before and after the Voting Rights Act was passed were moments that will never be forgotten. Later came the importance of the Voter Education Project (VEP), an extension to the voting Rights Act. There were many other organizations that host the Voter education Project, for example, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial …show more content…

It was known that minority groups like Mexican-Americans also faced discrimination and were denied the participation in the political process with equal rights like other Americans. Chicago activist Barbara Jordan stated that discriminatory acts towards minorities were still accruing in Texas even after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 and after the renewal in 1970. Thanks to Barbara Jordan, “the House overwhelmingly passed a ten-year extension of the VRA, adopting Barbara Jordan’s new protections for language minorities.” The new Voting Rights Act brought a new change to the Mexican-American community, bringing an increase in Mexican-Americans holding county and municipal offices which lead to a more fair and equal representation of Mexican-Americans. Even though the Voting Rights Act was a success towards minority groups like African Americans and Mexican-Americans. Many conservative southern states and people from the Republican Party were not happy with the Voting Rights Act and called it and believed it was “unconstitutional”. This brought then to the point where they wanted to make it more difficult for blacks and Mexican-Americans to vote. They even challenged the unconstitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in front of the Supreme Court in 1996 but they were not successful. After this president Regan

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This act, passed by the 89th Congress, is considered one of the most important Civil Rights acts ever passed. This bill allowed anyone, no matter what race, to vote freely, without worrying about being accosted of claims of illiteracy, insufficient education, etc… This contributed to the controversy in Texas, because the way voting districts were drawn at the time, using Stacked Vote gerrymandering, meant that districts were often times drawn based on race. Before the act was passed; this led to the white population in the districts—Remember this was during the Civil Rights Era—often times preventing the, “Colored Population”, from voting, citing reasons such as; Lack of Knowledge, and Illiteracy. This acts passing stopped all of that. The acts passing created another problem.

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