Voting Rights Act Of 1965 Essay

economy and pay the taxes. Unless the government plans to be a dictatorship, they ought to leave room for people's problems and opinions to be heard. After all, the laws government creates will affect them the most. One of the greatest ways for a citizen to participate in politics, or to 'be heard', is to vote. The voting population has power, however little it might be on its own. Politicians must attempt to please them. Still, what happens when citizens are denied their vote? If they cannot use this power, how will their problems ever be addressed? The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is one of the more important civil rights legislatures. It forbade local governments to apply unequal standards to its voters, such as forcing tests on the black voters that they didn't make the white voters take (Grofman.) The Act also stated that literacy was to be presumed in voting rights court cases, at least for people who had completed the sixth grade (Laney). The use of literacy tests in particular were made illegal (Grofman). Finally, the Act provided federal oversight for areas of

First, there was racism and discrimination rampant across the South. Just because slavery had 'officially' been abolished didn't mean Southerners liked or accepted it. Many rights-activists and blacks were attacked or even killed during this time. Second, the previous attempts at equalizing voting rights for men weren't working. The Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870, said that “The right of US citizens to vote shall not be denied...on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” (Amend. XV, Section 1). Still, many people were denied the right to vote. Literacy tests were created (Laney). Voting complexes were far away from the black population (Laney). Many people in the nation wanted to disenfranchise black voting permanently. Although the law had given this right to the minorities, few citizens actually acted like