Voting Rights Act Of 1965: An Analysis

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As President Lyndon B. Johnson once stated, “Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact” (Johnson). In 1965, in response to black Americans being incessantly disenfranchised, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting. For its first 48 years, the Voting Rights Act was extremely effective, with black voter registration and turnout reaching new heights. Nearly fifty years later, in the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court declared Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. This ruling has essentially made the …show more content…
Johnson took action with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act “eliminated literacy tests and other disenfranchising devices in states” to enable more African Americans to be able to vote (Berman 32). To identify the states where this discrimination was transpiring, the Federal Government used a formula that “captured the key southern states where the bulk of black voters were disenfranchised” (Berman 32). This formula is now known as Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. States and localities that were identified by Section 4 were subject to preclearance, meaning that they had to approve any election law or procedure changes with the Federal Court or the Department of Justice. This clause, known as Section 5, ensured that states could not make any changes to election laws that were discriminatory in nature. Civil rights leaders and many Americans were overjoyed over the eventual signing of this legislation. John Lewis, an important leader of the Civil Rights Movement, “called the VRA’s signing ‘a high point in modern America’” (Berman 38). This legislation would be remembered as one of Johnson’s greatest accomplishments. Johnson’s daughter Luci Baines remembered that her father “felt a great sense of victory” after its signing (Berman 38). Despite all of the good that resulted from the Voting Rights Act, there were still many obstacles to …show more content…
Acknowledging its success, Congress continued to reauthorize and in some cases, expand the Voting Rights Act throughout the remainder of the 20th century. The act was reauthorized four times within the ensuing fifty years, each time with overwhelming bipartisan consensus in Congress. However, in the Shelby County v. Holder case of 2013, the Supreme Court declared Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, effectively negating the rest of the landmark legislation. Unfortunately, however, the problems that prompted the Voting Rights Act in the first place were not solved. Under the Voting Rights Act, states and localities previously identified by Section 4 could be bailed out from pre-clearance. To be bailed out, localities must prove that there has been no voter discrimination in the past ten years. Between the years 1965 and 2013, no counties in Louisiana or Mississippi were bailed out and only one each in Georgia and Alabama were (New York Times). These low numbers prove that to some extent, voter discrimination in the South still exists. In the Shelby County v. Holder case, Shelby County only focused on proving that minimal vote denial occurred. In the United States, the problem is not so much vote denial as it is vote dilution. Many states have reworked their district lines to ensure that there are fewer black majority districts, which is known as gerrymandering. This
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