OPINION: The denial of African American voting rights, a perennial problem

By Ivory Phillips

JA Contributing Editor

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law that became known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It resulted in a great deal of celebrating in African American communities around the country, especially in the American South where Jim Crow laws had made it virtually impossible for African Americans to exercise the right to vote. On the other hand, there was great consternation in many white communities, especially in the former Confederate states – there was literally “wailing and grinding of teeth.” 

The Voting Rights Act removed tremendous obstacles to voting, enabling African Americans to not only vote but elect their brothers and sisters to political offices.

The enactment of the Voting Rights Act, however, was not the first time the problem of the denial of such rights had been confronted. Its enactment, likewise, did not resolve the matter for all times. 

In the aftermath of the defeat of the rebellious states, in what was the American Civil War, the U.S. Constitution was amended. The Fourteenth Amendment gave the right to vote to former enslaved people, and to African Americans in general, since all of them were seen and treated as if they had been enslaved.

Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, in 1868, nevertheless, did not mean African Americans could automatically begin voting. Enabling legislation was required to determine the conditions under which the Amendment would be enforced. Because the parties winning the Civil War were in charge politically, they passed laws enabling African American men to vote and hold office. This was the period of Reconstruction.

As former confederates and their sympathizers – through corruption, violence, and trickery – made their way back into office, they passed laws curbing or denying the recently won voting rights of African Americans. Literacy tests, poll taxes, morals provisions, and grandfather clauses were used so extensively that until the turn of the 20th Century up to 90% of African American men still were unable to vote. That condition prevailed until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, nearly four generations later.

The significance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 cannot and should not be underestimated. By the time of its enactment, women had been granted the right to vote through the 19th Amendment ratified in 1920. This meant the African American vote could be more than twice what it had been prior to the 19th Amendment. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was further significant because in most southern states the African American population was substantial – in Mississippi and South Carolina it was a majority – enabling the election of scores and later hundreds of African Americans to office. This Act also was significant because it encouraged even more African Americans to register to vote and inspired many African Americans in the north, east, and west to vote and to run for office.

In one singular action, the literacy tests, poll taxes, and negative grandfather clauses were abolished. In addition, the Voting Rights Act prevented states and areas with histories of racial discrimination from enacting voting and re-districting laws without having them pre-cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice or through the courts.

Many observers thought this fixed the problem. What they were unable to realize was that because the idea of White Supremacy, which had been behind the earlier restrictions, was still alive and well, especially in the Jim Crow South, there would be continued ways and means pursued to weaken “Black voting strength.” Subsequently, after being in effect for nearly 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shelby County vs. Holder, struck a death blow to part of the Voting Rights Act and then followed it up with another death blow in Louisiana vs. Callais.

Those decisions have underscored the perennial nature of the problem. It is for certain that as long as White Supremacy is in the driver’s seat, there will be actions from various states, from the president, Congress, or the Supreme Court designed to curb or deny the voting rights of African Americans. 

Advocates can and must keep trying, in all arenas, to obtain the goal of full voting rights for all citizens. Meanwhile, it is primarily up to African American people to understand the precarious position in which they are situated and to do whatever is necessary to help diminish white racism and to increase Black Power in order to secure effective voting rights, the tool that leads to all the other rights.