Voting Rights Act Of 1965 Essay

Sharon Salzberg once said, “Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country and this world.” This is relevant to today because voting is overlooked and taken for granted. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided equal rights to all people and enabled all races the equality they deserve. This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting.
After the U.S. Civil War , the 15th Amendment prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude, meaning previous slaves had the right to vote. Nevertheless, in the following decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote. Blacks, who had low literacy rates after years of poverty and oppression from their white owners, were forced to take literacy tests, which they unavoidably failed. Other extreme tests were administered to African Americans that would even be a challenge to
In less than a year, a quarter of a million new African American voters were registered to vote. In the years following the passing of the act, the number of blacks in the House of Representatives over doubled, giving African Americans the voice in government they deserved. According to Martin Luther King Jr. the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an essential piece of legislation to guarantee civil rights for African Americans. The Act was not accepted without conflict. Instantly, it was challenged in court as a result of such a significant change in the federalism between the state and federal government. The Supreme Court upheld the new law and declared it constitutional, cementing the rights of African American