A Brief History of Voter’s Rights for Blacks in America
1869
Congress passes the Fifteenth Amendment giving African American men the right to vote.
1896
Louisiana passes "grandfather clauses" to keep former slaves and their descendants from voting. As a result, registered black voters drops from 44.8% in 1896 to 4.0% four years later. Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama and Virginia follow Louisiana's lead by enacting their own grandfather clauses.
1940
Only 3% of eligible African Americans in the South are registered to vote. Jim Crow laws like literacy tests and poll taxes were meant to keep African Americans from voting.
1964
Poll taxes are outlawed with the adoption of the 24th Amendment.
1965
More than 500 non-violent civil rights marchers are attacked by law enforcement officers while attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand the need for African American voting rights.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law, permanently barring barriers to political participation by racial and ethnic minorities, prohibiting any election practice that denies the right to vote on account of race, and requiring jurisdictions with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval for changes in their election laws before they can take effect.
By the end of 1965, 250,000 new black voters are registered, one third of them by federal examiners.
1972
Barbara Jordan of Houston and Andrew Young of Atlanta become the first African Americans elected to Congress from the South since Reconstruction.
2011
Restrictions to voting passed in South Carolina, Texas and Florida are found to disproportionately impact minority voters.
Florida passed a law that restricts voter registration and made cuts to early voting. The majority of African Americans in Florida rely on early voting to cast a ballot, and register to vote through community based registration.
Texas passed one of the nation's most restrictive voter ID laws. Under the VRA, the state was required to submit the law to DOJ or the DC federal district court for approval. The court blocked the law, citing racial impact.
South Carolina passed a restrictive voter ID law that would keep more than 180,000 African Americans from casting a ballot.
2013
The ACLU represented the NAACP's Alabama chapter in Shelby v. Holder. In the decision, the Supreme Court crippled one of the most effective protections for the right to vote by rendering ineffective the requirement that certain jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination get pre-approval for voting changes. States have wasted no time enacting potentially discriminatory laws including Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, South Dakota, Iowa, and Indiana.
2020
John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is which aims to restore the full protections of the original, bipartisan Voting Rights Act of 1965 is read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
The good news is that we have the chance to fix it now. Congress can pass a new, flexible and forward-looking set of protections that work together to guarantee our right to vote — and it's not just wishful thinking.
Red the FULL content from: https://www.aclu.org/voting-rights-act-major-dates-history
