1. Section 3 Suffrage and Civil Rights

2. Objectives: * Describe the 15 th Amendment and the tactics use to circumvent it in an effort to deny African-Americans the right to vote. * Explain the significance of the early civil rights legislation passed in 1957, 1960, and 1964. * Analyze the provisions and effects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

3. * How important is the right to vote? * For those who do not have it, that right can seem as important as life itself. * Civil Rights workers suffered arrest, beatings, shocks with a cattle prod, even death in the name of the right to vote. * Their efforts inspired a nation to secure suffrage for African-Americans and other minority groups.

4. The Fifteenth Amendment * The 15 th Amendment began to extend the right to vote to African-Americans in the late 1800s. * It declares that the right to vote cannot be denied to any citizen of the United States because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. * The means to enforce this amendment was not enough for some 90 years.

5. * African-Americans were generally and systematically kept from the polls in much of the south. * White supremacists employed a number of tactics to keep African-Americans from voting. * Some tactics included threats, social pressures, such as firing African- Americans who registered to vote. * Some were denied store credit at local stores.

6. * Many formal “legal” devices were used… > literacy tests * Gerrymandering – a practice of drawing electoral district lines (boundaries of geographic regions) in order to limit the voting strength of a particular group. * Democrats in the South were recognized as “private associations” and could admit who they wanted. They routinely refused to allow African-Americans into their party.

7. * The Supreme Court finally outlawed the white primary as it was called in 1944 (Smith v. Allwright) * They said that political parties are performing a public function when they nominate candidates and thus must follow the terms of the 15 th Amendment. * Gerrymandering was outlawed in 1960 by the Supreme Court (Gomiilion v. Lightoot). * Tuskegee, AL drew district boundaries to exclude blacks from the city limits.

8. * Led by the Supreme Court, the lower courts began to strike down many of the practices to disenfranchise African- Americans. * Finally, and largely in response to the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Congress moved to act. * It passed several civil rights laws that contained a number of sections that were implements of the 15 th Amendment.

9. Early Civil Rights Legislation * First laws that were passed to implement the 15 th Amendment were the Civil Rights Acts of 1957. * It set up the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. * It gave the Attorney General the right to seek court orders to prevent interference with any person’s right to vote in federal elections. * It appointed federal voting referees to serve in precincts where voter discrimination was found.

10. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 * This was much broader and more effective than either of the other two measures. * It outlaws discrimination in several areas, especially job-related matters. * It allowed the federal government to seek and injunction – a court order that either compels (forces) or restrains (limits) the performance of some act by a private individual or by a public official. * A violation, was a contempt of court punishable

11. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 * This act applied to all elections, not just federal. * The attorney general is to challenge the constitutionality of the remaining State poll-tax laws in federal court. * Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections - 1966 * This law suspended the use of literacy tests for voting, and allowed voting examiners to monitor those States and areas the were continuing this practice.

12. * Voting Rights Act of 1965 put in further restrictions on voting. * No voting law could be passed unless it was approved by the Supreme Court. * This is called preclearance Amendments to the Acts * Permanent ban on all literacy tests to vote was enacted * Other provisions have been enacted, such as, language-minority groups being protected to register and vote in elections.