The NAACP's role in securing passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Description and Evolution

On February 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) became one of the nation's first civil rights organizations aimed at promoting equal rights for African-Americans. Although the NAACP was founded mainly to combat racial violence, its overarching goal was "to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, the equal protection of the law, and universal adult male suffrage, respectively" (APA, 2009). In 1910, the NAACP saw an early court victory, helping end a "discriminatory Oklahoma law that regulated voting by means of a grandfather clause" (APA, 2009). However, these discriminatory practices continued, and, after successful lobbying for the integration of the armed forces, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the NAACP lobbied for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (APA, 2009). To do so, the NAACP banded together with other civil rights organizations, to support the act. These civil rights organizations engaged in a series of highly-publicized protests, aimed at drawing attention to the voter disparity. There were protests throughout Alabama, including the famous march from Selma to Montgomery. These protests were met with tremendous violence by white people, including an "unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama" (USDOJ, 2008). This action prompted President Lyndon Johnson, who had not always been a proponent of civil rights, to ask Congress to enact a voting rights act with teeth.

Looking at the history of voting discrimination, Congress came to realize that "the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment" (USDOJ, 2008). Even more significant was the fact that the legislative hearings revealed the futility of prior Department of Justice attempts to remedy the discrimination through lawsuits; "as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew" (USDOJ, 2008). Therefore, they, along with the Johnson Administration, began to work on a version of a voting rights protection act. Support for the act was far from unanimous; many congressmen still opposed the act. Both the Senate and the House initially passed their versions of the act, which were different, and both passed the act that resulted from a conference between the two houses. However, the final act was not supported by approximately 1/5th of the Senate and substantially more than 1/5th of the House of Representatives. President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law on August 6, 1965 (USDOJ, 2008).

The law had several significant features. First, it did not purport to outlaw some of the measures, like the poll tax, which had been traditionally used to deny African-Americans the right to vote. It did, however, prohibit voting literacy tests. Even more essential, although also more controversial, was the fact that the Act targeted specific jurisdictions:

where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory affect. In addition, the Attorney General could designate a county covered by these special provisions for the appointment of a federal examiner to review the qualifications of persons who wanted to register to vote. Further, in those counties where a federal examiner was serving, the Attorney General could request that federal observers monitor activities within the county's polling place (USDOJ, 2008).

While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not prohibit the use of poll taxes, it did direct the Attorney General to challenge the use of those taxes. The Attorney General did so, and "on Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Between 1965 and 1969 the Supreme Court also issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices that required Section 5 review" (USDOJ, 2008). In this way, the Supreme Court demonstrated support for the Act, showing that all three branches of the government were committed to voting equality. Moreover, Congress responded to the Supreme Court's broad support for the Act by extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 1970 and 1975. In response to testimony that Hispanic, Asian, and Native American citizens had experienced significant voting discrimination, the 1975 amendments "added protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens" (USDOJ, 2008). Throughout the 1970s, claims aimed at ending racially-discriminatory gerrymandering were successful, though that largely came to a halt in the 1980s, after the Supreme Court determined that racially discriminatory gerrymandering had to have a discriminatory purpose. Congress renewed the act in 1982, and amended Section 2 "to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove discriminatory purpose" (USDOJ, 2008).

Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 builds on two constitutional amendments. The first of those is the 15th Amendment, which granted African-American men the right to vote (U.S. Const. amend. XV). The second of those is the 19th Amendment, which granted female citizens, including African-Americans, the right to vote. Combined, these two amendments theoretically granted all African-Americans the right to vote, although there is still no constitutional amendment guaranteeing citizens the right to vote.

Voting Rights and African-Americans

The Civil Rights Division

The U.S. Department of Justice established the Civil Rights Division in 1957, in response to the first civil rights statutes since Reconstruction. Although these civil rights statutes now protect people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, they were originally drafted to combat the institutionalized racism found in the Jim Crow south. "The Division is the primary institution within the federal government responsible for enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, handicap, religion, and national origin" (USDOJ, 2009). As such, it enforces national civil rights provisions, prosecutes criminal actions under the civil rights acts, and coordinates the civil rights enforcement efforts of other federal agencies.

American Society Turnout

One of the most interesting aspects about voting rights and the opposition to voting rights is the fact that a substantial number of Americans fail to exercise their right to vote. Even in the 2008 general election, which had widely-touted voter turnout, a number of eligible people did not vote. Michael McDonald engaged in a complex study, which not only looked at people in the population who were age-eligible for voting, but also looked at the number of people who were not otherwise disenfranchised, such as felons or foreign nationals. He found an overall turnout rate of truly eligible people of 61.7%, which means that almost 40% of people who were eligible to vote in the 2008 election, failed to do so (McDonald, 2009). McDonald also found an overall turnout rate of 56.8% of all age-eligible people, which would mean that only slightly more than half of all age-eligible people voted in the 2008 election (McDonald, 2009).

Black Turnout vs. White Turnout

Traditionally, there has been a lower turnout among black voters than white voters, a fact that is particularly disconcerting, given that there is still a substantial amount of institutionalized racism, which might be best combated by having more African-Americans in office. African-American voter turnout was incredible for the 2008 presidential election, but those figures, while encouraging, do not reflect the normal trend of African-American voter turnout. Instead, that trend shows that black voter turnout generally hovers between 40% and 50% of age eligible voters for presidential elections, and between 20% and 30% for midterm elections (Marcelo et al., 2008). While white voter turnout is only marginally higher, with over 50% participation in the 2004 presidential election and about 43% in the 2000 presidential election, the fact that white voter turnout is lower, percentage-wise for local elections, may help highlight one of the issues with voter turnout (Marcelo et al., 2008). Their higher rates of participation in midterm elections demonstrate a commitment to the voting process in the African-American community, which makes one question why the African-American participation rates would be lower than white participation rates in presidential elections. This may be explained by factors that continue to prohibit full African-American participation in the electoral process

Voting Rights Now

While states no longer prohibit voters through poll taxes or literacy tests, it is a fallacy to assume that there is equality in voting. However, that is a fallacy. African-Americans are not eligible to vote in the same percentages as other Americans, a problem that is quickly expanding to Hispanics, as well. This is due to the fact that African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans are overrepresented in the felon population. Even if one agrees that non-violent drug-related offenses, such as possession, should be treated as felonies, the reality is that African-American and Hispanic defendants are likely to be charged with higher degrees of crime and are more likely to be convicted than white defendants. In fact, most experts believe that the overrepresentation of African-American males in prison population is not due to greatly increased criminality in that group, but due to the fact that they are more likely to be zealously pursued in all aspects of the criminal justice process. This is a very important factor when one considers that one of the side-effects of a felony conviction is disenfranchisement, whether temporary or permanent.

There is no escaping the reality that felon disenfranchisement has a disproportionate impact on African-Americans. There is also no escaping the reality that American prisons are full of drug-related offenders. If allowed to vote, many of these felons, like many non-criminal Americans, would probably vote to decriminalize drug-related behavior, and provide appropriate social services, such as drug treatment programs, for addicts. However, because of felon disenfranchisement, it is unlikely that these sweeping changes will ever occur. This means that the nations' laws do not reflect the wishes of everyone in the nation, but instead intentionally ignore the wishes of significant portions of the nation's population. The issue is especially problematic when one considers that there is no real reason to deny felons the right to vote. If the laws are just and desired by the majority of people, the proportion of convicted felons is sufficiently small to sway votes. However, if the laws are unjust or discriminatory and are opposed by a significant portion of the population, then the felon vote might be sufficient to change legislation.

Conclusion

One of the hallmarks of a free society is that all of its citizens have the right to vote. While this right was theoretically granted to African-American males following the conclusion of the Civil War with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the reality is that African-Americans were denied a meaningful right to vote until the latter-half of the twentieth century. Although the 15th Amendment prohibited denying citizens their right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude, race-based disenfranchisement quickly became the norm in Southern states (U.S. Const. amend. XV). This disenfranchisement was accomplished through intimidation, poll taxes, literacy requirements for voters, and other measures aimed at preventing African-Americans from voting. These actions were cloaked as racially neutral; for example, literacy requirements would require to both white and African-American citizens, but contained grandfather clauses that could only factually benefit white voters. Even when the Supreme Court began to find some of these voting laws unconstitutional, states could simply react by drafting new laws, with the same goal of keeping African-Americans disenfranchised. Some commentators believe that race-based disenfranchisement continues to occur, which is mostly accomplished through two methods: gerrymandering, and the legal disenfranchisement of convicted felons. Even if all Americans still do not have equal access to voting opportunities, there is a substantial equality that simply did not exist in the early part of the twentieth century. That change is largely due to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which gave Congress the means to prevent racially-biased voting requirements.