1. Chapter 28 Section 3 The Civil Rights Movement Riddlebarger
Voting Rights
Chapter 28
Section 3
The Civil Rights Movement
Riddlebarger

2. Gaining Voting Rights
Voting rights, like other civil rights victories comes at a great human cost & sacrifice.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, SCLC shifts their focus to voting rights.

3. 24th Amendment 1962: Congress approves 24th Amendment
Banned states from taxing citizens to vote
End of Poll Tax in presidential & congressional elections.

4. Registering Voters
Kennedy administration urges SNCC to focus on voter registration
They say the vote is the key to bringing change to the South
State’s rights?

5. Voter Education Project
Soon realize that there is just as much resistance to African-Americans voting as with segregation
Voter Education Project was to register blacks in the South to vote.
Over 1/2 million registered
Stiff resistance in Mississippi

6. Freedom Summer
After 24th Amendment, student volunteers head to South to register voters and teach summer schools.
Trained at Miami (OH) University
Mississippi spent $82/white student; $22/black student on education

7. Crisis in Mississippi 1st 200 volunteers arrive late June 1964
One goes missing the next day
2 White students disappear along with a black CORE worker
Bodies found in August after manhunt
2/3 of volunteers go home
State drops charges against suspects
Federal government tries on Civil Rights charges
Successes of Freedom Summer- education & some voters registered

8. 1964 Election Freedom Summer overshadowed by 1964 election.
Lyndon Johnson (D)
Barry Goldwater (R )
Most civil rights organizations agree to halt protests during election to help LBJ
SNCC disagrees and helps form Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Democratic convention

9. Fannie Lou Hamer
“ All this on account of us wanting to register to become first class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephone off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”

10. Selma
Jan. 1965: Dr. King begins campaign for black’s voting rights in Selma, Alabama.
Protest marches lead to thousands of arrests.
Police are restrained
Don’t want to start a confrontation
King forces his own arrest and this brings the desired attention to Selma.

11. Selma March 4-day march planned to state capital.
Gov. Wallace: “It will not be tolerated.”
March 7, 1965: 600 marchers set out for Montgomery

12. Violence in Selma
Just outside Selma, marchers are attacked by state police using tear gas, clubs, chains and cattle prods.
Footage is shown across country on TV
Dr. King was not there.
King calls for the march to continue later
With Federal protection, the march reaches Montgomery on March 25.

13. Voting Rights Act of 1965
Pres. Johnson asks for law to protect voting rights the month after Selma
One of most important pieces of civil rights legislation
Tens of thousands of blacks soon registered to vote
Blacks soon elected to office in the South.
Voting Rights Act of Gives the Federal government the ability to break down barriers preventing blacks from voting (literacy tests, etc.)